In the days leading up to their departure, 14 Cannon Place is in a state of feverish excitement. Why do their parents need so many suitcases? The two taxis are weighed down under mountains of bags stuffed with tweed coats, blankets, pillows, stacks of novels that no one will ever read, Gerald’s precious pair of binoculars for bird-watching … and now here come other servants, bravely carrying hatboxes and walking sticks, newspapers and packets of playing cards, tennis rackets and golf clubs, Fortnum & Mason picnic baskets filled with delicious snacks for the journey.
Gerald’s personal assistant becomes agitated. She is the person responsible for looking after passports, tickets, and customs declarations. Good God, Gerald has forgotten something at the house; quick, they must send a taxi back to Cannon Hall; they’re going to miss the train. Gerald sulks. Really, what is the point of insisting on going on a trip? It’s complicated and exhausting, and besides, they’re perfectly happy at home. Muriel sighs, patiently asks him to stop bellyaching. Daphne knows her father will calm down once he’s on the boat, crossing the English Channel. He loves walking along the deck, in a raincoat, face whipped by the wind. Muriel locks herself in her cabin, curtains drawn, and lies down on the bed, moaning softly. The sisters are horribly seasick, throwing up and generally wishing they were dead. Only Gerald holds up in the face of the elements, like a stoical captain.
When they reach French soil, Gerald and his assistant take care of the customs process, which always takes ages. Gerald has hidden bottles of wine and cartons of cigarettes in one of the bags, but he can’t remember which one. The French customs officers are suspicious of this elegant English family with their French-sounding name and their heaps of luggage. The officers are methodical, opening every bag, every suitcase. Sometimes the keys to the padlocks have gone missing and Muriel grows impatient while Gerald distributes generous tips (which will prove very useful when the cigarettes and wine are discovered) and remains curiously calm.
The long trek is far from over. Now they must find their seats on the train, but there are problems with their reservations. Daphne watches Muriel busying herself again, the assistant brandishes the tickets, Gerald repeats his routine with the tips and his hesitant French (which makes the girls giggle), and in the end everything is settled. Daphne’s father turns his sleeper carriage into an exact replica of his bedroom in Cannon Hall: the same lotions, toothpaste, powders, little sponges, cologne, pajamas, and bathrobe are neatly laid out, while in the neighboring compartment he keeps his books, his newspapers, fruit, cigarettes, cushions. What Daphne likes best about these long journeys to sunnier climes is the meals in the restaurant carriage, because Gerald very skillfully ridicules the other travelers behind their backs, giving perfect imitations of their snobbish airs, the way they chew their food or wipe their lips on their napkins, and the girls choke with laughter under the affable but somewhat irritated gaze of their mother.
It is only when they arrive at the hotel that things turn sour. Gerald’s hopes are dashed: his room does not have an attractive view, overlooking some boring road rather than the sea; what’s worse, it faces northeast, not southwest, and he came here for the sunlight! The hotel manager is hastily summoned, and Gerald puts on a distressed face as he expresses his disappointment. The manager listens and offers him a south-facing room with a prettier view.
So they have to pack everything up again, the clothes, the books, the cards, the binoculars, the cushions, the newspapers, Muriel’s knitting. But, as Daphne suspects, Gerald will, the next morning, continue his litany of complaints: this cold wind on the terrace, this over-salted food; the place is “shilling,”* there are too many people, and—what a bore!—all of them “Witherspoons.”* And it’s like that for the entire stay. Daphne is used to it by now. The local cuisine holds no interest for Gerald, who makes do with a slice of roast beef, a romaine salad, but absolutely no garlic! He hates chicken, veal, coffee, figs, and grapes. Even the best vintage wines leave him cold; he would rather drink champagne any day. And he must have his big cups of Indian tea with six sugar lumps in each.
Why go on vacation, when their house is perfect? Gerald whines, and Muriel smiles at him, indefatigable, just a bit tense, comforting him, trying to keep him entertained. Each morning, Daphne watches her mother as she anxiously checks the weather, because if by any chance the day is overcast or, even worse, rainy, Gerald will be unbearable for the rest of the vacation.
* * *
No more school. From now on, a private tutor will come every day to give lessons to the sisters at Cannon Hall. Her name is Maud Waddell. Behind the comforting, maternal appearance of this well-rounded, blue-eyed brunette, however, there lurks an iron will. She begins every sentence with My dear, but you mustn’t be fooled: she always gets what she wants. The sisters come up with a nickname for this new governess with her opera-singer voice: Tod, from the verb “toddle,” derived from Maud’s surname, which sounds like “waddle,” but also based on one of their favorite Beatrix Potter characters, Mr. Tod the fox. Tod is appalled by Daphne’s substandard grammar and spelling, which must be dealt with, and quickly. There is a connection between them, despite Tod’s authority—to which Daphne submits—because the two of them share an insatiable appetite for reading, which Angela and Jeanne do not possess. Tod is thrilled by Daphne’s enthusiasm for literature and provides her with a succession of books. Daphne likes the kinds of poetry collections that adolescents usually don’t appreciate—Shelley, Browning, Keats, Swinburne, and Donne—then she devours the novels by her grandfather George du Maurier. Daphne has been told by her father that Kicky wrote these books quite late in life, in his late fifties, after he had returned to England, after the loss of his left eye (which put an end to his career as a painter), after his marriage with Emma Wightwick (Big Granny) and the births of their five children, of whom Gerald was the youngest. Kicky began writing thanks to his friend the famous novelist Henry James, who advised him one day to tell his own stories using the written word rather than simply drawing them. Before the publication of his books, Kicky was known for his illustrations: he was a renowned caricaturist who worked for the Victorian satirical magazine Punch. Daphne drinks in every detail of her grandfather’s drawings: the comical way he sketched the hassles of family life and society life, the subtleties of class distinctions, the bitter moments of everyday existence.
She begins with Kicky’s first novel, Peter Ibbetson. From the raw material of his memories, her grandfather resuscitated the lost Paris of his youth, depicting its former splendors, its rose-colored hues, the enclosure at the end of the fence on Rue de Passy, the Auteuil pond, the building with green shutters where he grew up. It is more a fable than a novel, Daphne notes, an autobiographical account soaked through with a touching nostalgia. Kicky expresses himself through his protagonist, Gogo, who has also not forgotten his childhood seasoned with the odors of cabbage soup and beef boiled in vinaigrette. Daphne has the impression of being transported to Paris in 1840, of finding herself on Rue de la Pompe and seeing Kicky’s characters as they savor a glass of red wine on their doorstep, while Gogo plays and sings with Mimsey, the little girl next door. But upon the sudden death of his parents, Gogo is torn away from his enchanted garden to live with a cruel uncle under the gray skies of London. His name is no longer Gogo Pasquier, but Peter Ibbetson. After killing his horrible uncle, he ends up in a lunatic asylum. And it is there, to Daphne’s stupefaction, that his real life begins, thanks to the magic of “dreaming true,” the capacity that the book’s two heroes—Peter and Mary (the Mimsey of his childhood)—have to use to find each other through daydreams. Despite their physical separation, they succeed in loving each other, joining together in their dreams, visiting the Paris of their youth, building an imaginary house, diving into the past of their ancestors, and discovering an aristocratic glassblowing forebear. “Dreaming true”: Daphne is enraptured by this idea. Could she do the same thing? Her grandfather did it, after all, while her father pretends to be someone else every single ev
ening, so why shouldn’t she do it, too? That way, she could escape, she could dream up, imagine, truly become, Eric Avon.
She follows this book up with Trilby, Kicky’s second novel, which was, she knows, an immense success, even in the United States. It is the story of Trilby O’Farrell, a half-Irish girl working as a laundress and artist’s model, who falls under the magnetic spell of Svengali, the darkly seductive pianist and hypnotist. The action takes place in Paris, where Kicky took his art classes, on Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs in Montparnasse. Under hypnosis, Trilby becomes a famous opera singer. Svengali turns her into his puppet and manipulates her as he pleases in order to obtain fame and fortune. The fall of poor Trilby will thus be all the harder. Unlike Peter Ibbetson, this is no sweet tale of family and childhood memories; Svengali casts his evil shadow over everything. But while Daphne prefers the first novel for its gentle nostalgia and its invitation to dreaming, she is nevertheless marked by the captivating darkness of Svengali, who attracts her despite herself.
The months pass, and Daphne’s craving for books still isn’t sated. Tod suggests other novels: Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, Stevenson, Wilde and his Portrait of Dorian Gray, Sheridan’s plays, the complete works of the Brontë sisters, particularly Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The magic of books is a drug, an enchantment, an escape route, as powerful and bewitching as Peter Pan’s Neverland. While her sisters go on with their lives (tea dances for Angela, tennis and cricket for Jeanne), while Muriel reigns supreme as the exemplary mistress of Cannon Hall, while Gerald makes his fans swoon on the boards of the theater, Daphne reads.
One spring morning is engraved into her memory for the rest of her life. Her mother had asked her to come to her morning room on the first floor, next to Gerald’s study, a sunny room with a brick and ceramic fireplace and a view of the rose plants and greenhouses. Muriel is sitting in her bergère chair, concentrated on her knitting. Daphne darling, I have to talk to you. It is never a good sign when her mother uses that voice. She thinks quickly, as she admires the knitting needles continuing their metronomic ballet: What could she have done or said to earn Mummy’s wrath? Did she make a blunder? Behave rudely? Forget something? Now that you are twelve, you mustn’t be surprised if something not very nice happens to you in a few weeks. You have had backaches recently, and this may be a sign. Daphne replies that her back does not hurt at the moment and feels relieved: A backache, is that all this is about? But her mother goes on in the same serious voice, No, perhaps not, but what I have to tell you is this. All girls, when they turn twelve, begin to bleed for a few days every month. It can’t be stopped. It’s just something that happens. And it goes on happening, every month, until they are middle-aged, and then it stops. Daphne, speechless, stares at her mother. What on earth is she talking about? Bleeding, every month, for forty years? Muriel attempts to reassure her, It’s all right, it’s not an illness, and it’s not even like a cut. It doesn’t hurt. But you can have tummy ache. I myself have bad headaches at the time. Angela bleeds, but I have told her never to talk to you about it and you must promise never to tell Jeanne.
Closing the door of her mother’s room, Daphne feels dazed. Perhaps, with a bit of luck, this dreadful thing will never happen to her? If she were a boy, she wouldn’t have to put up with this humiliation. How lucky boys are! She does her best to forget the whole story, but one morning Alice, the young maid, whispers to her that “the thing” has arrived. Daphne has just finished eating breakfast and is feeling a little under the weather. What thing? Alice asks her to follow her to the bedroom, hands her a pair of pajama bottoms, and points out a strange stain. What a nightmare, being a girl, having to trouble yourself with these thick bands of cloth that must be changed every four hours, having to endure this painful heaviness in your lower abdomen, this stiff back, the compassionate and oddly tender looks of adults who, nonetheless, say nothing, not even a word of reassurance, because they must think of little Jeanne, the poor little girl, the innocent, utterly clueless about the horror that awaits her. Is this what it means—no longer wanting to play cricket, to kick a soccer ball, to run in the garden, being reduced to curling up on the sofa with a hot water bottle on your belly—is this what it is to be a woman? Because if it is, then Daphne wants none of it. She curses her feminine gender; she wants to continue playing the role of the glorious Eric Avon, the young man, the conqueror, the hero, who will never be reduced to bleeding into diapers. If only she had been the son her father wanted so much, the boy he dreamed of producing, who would pass on to his own son the French surname of which he was so proud, she would never have become stuck in this shameful, pathetic situation. Code name: “Robert.”* That is how the du Maurier sisters jokingly rechristen menstruation.
In the mirror of the third-floor bathroom at Cannon Hall, Daphne has not changed in spite of this damned Robert: she has the same fine features, the same blond hair that she refuses to curl, cut short like a boy. She persists in dressing like a schoolboy, in shorts, shirts, ties, sweaters, long wool socks, clumsy clodhoppers on her feet.
She is a boy in a girl’s body. The only person who suspects this ambiguous situation is Tod. The two of them have been close for two years now. For two years, Tod has been reading, every night, the notes Daphne leaves in her homework, the letters stuffed with spelling mistakes that make her roll her eyes in despair, but how can she fail to be touched by these intimate confessions, by the trust that Daphne shows her? I really don’t know why I feel like this. You don’t know how I long to have a good talk with you and pour everything out. I must be an awful rotter as we have a ripping time always, and no kids could be more indulged and made more a fuss of, yet I long for something so terribly and I don’t know what it is. The feeling is always there and I don’t think I shall ever find it. It’s no good telling the others, they wouldn’t understand, everyone thinks I’m moody and tiresome. People say I’m acid and bitter, it’s terrible at my age to get bored with life.2
Eric Avon is gradually erased from Daphne’s days as she grows into a woman. And he fades away when Gerald proudly leaves a sealed envelope on Daphne’s plate one lunchtime. A letter from her father? Delighted, she rushes up to her bedroom to read it. It is a longish poem, which she deciphers slowly.
My very slender one
So brave of heart, but delicate of will,
So careful not to wound, never kill,
My tender one–
Who seems to live in Kingdoms all her own
In realms of joy
Where heroes young and old
In climates hot and cold
Do deeds of daring and much fame
And she knows she could do the same
If only she’d been born a boy.
And sometimes in the silence of the night
I wake and think perhaps my darling’s right
And that she should have been,
And, if I’d had my way,
She would have been, a boy.
My very slender one
So feminine and fair, so fresh and sweet,
So full of fun and womanly deceit.
My tender one
Who seems to dream her life away alone.
A dainty girl
But always well attired
And loves to be admired
Wherever she may be, and wants
To be the being who enchants
Because she has been born a girl.
And sometimes in the turmoil of the day
I pause, and think my darling may
Be one of those who will
For good or ill
Remain a girl for ever and be still
A Girl.
What did her father mean? That he wishes she weren’t a girl? Or that he is, ultimately, happy about it? Daphne does not understand. She doesn’t dare ask him. The other day, playing cricket with her in the garden, he whispered in her ear, I wish I was your brother instead of your father, we’d have such fun.3 In Kicky’s novels, his heroines Trilby and Mary are tall, robu
st, they look and act like lads, possessing the masculine grace of Peter Pan, his boyish agility. Peter Pan, her hero, who does not want to grow up. She would have liked so much to be like him, adventurous, magnificent, like her Llewelyn Davies cousins, all so remarkable, so full of vigor. Her father’s poem, which she recognizes as being tactless and awkward in spite of the love that throbs beneath it, brings back her unease. Feeling disoriented, she puts it in a drawer of her bedside table and, later, thanks her father with a tense smile.
* * *
What she dreads most are Sundays. Her father’s day of rest. The lunches given by Muriel at Cannon Hall are unmissable events to which only the cream of the theater world and London high society are invited. In summer, these gatherings can sometimes last the entire day, to Daphne’s dismay. The garden is a profusion of multicolored dresses and roses, the murmur of voices and laughter rise above the high brick wall, and the neighbors feel certain that, once again, a party is in full swing at the du Mauriers’ house. Muriel welcomes everyone with grace and poise, but the king is Gerald, spontaneous, elegant, irresistible. Even the famous playwright Sacha Guitry and American composer Melville Gideon come one Sunday to tread the impeccable lawn of Cannon Hall, applaud the rallies on the tennis court, and taste the mountains of food served by a silent army of servants dressed in gray alpaca uniforms.
The endless lunch mutates into afternoon tea, with cucumber sandwiches, sweets and tiered cakes, frappé coffee, and Earl Grey tea, before blurring into aperitifs. Daphne withdraws, hiding behind a bush, book in hand, while her sisters mingle with the guests, Jeanne shining on the tennis court, Angela chatting loquaciously. Good God, why is she so different? Why can’t she enjoy herself with the others? Why is it such torture for her to speak to people, to answer questions? She is shy, but so what? People seem to mistake her timidity for arrogance. It is true that she has a very determined chin. Daphne pretends not to listen to those never-ending comments about her beauty, those disparaging whispers about her two sisters; it’s tiresome and unfair. And now Muriel is calling her, insisting that she put her book down and come over to talk to Madeline, Audrey, Gladys, Leslie …