Daphne Du Maurier, page 1
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Margaret Forster
Title Page
Dedication
Family Tree
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
PART ONE
THE GOLDEN GIRL
1907–1932
PART TWO
MARRIAGE, MOTHERHOOD & REBECCA
1932–1939
PART THREE
THE YEARS BETWEEN
1939–1946
PART FOUR
THE BREAKING POINT
1946–1960
PART FIVE
DEATH OF THE WRITER
1960–1989
Picture Section
Afterword
Appendix
Works of Daphne du Maurier
Notes and References
Index
Copyright
About the Book
Rebecca, published in 1938, brought its author instant international acclaim, capturing the popular imagination with its haunting atmosphere of suspense and mystery. But the more fame this and her other books encouraged, the more reclusive Daphne du Maurier became.
Margaret Forster’s award-winning biography could hardly be more worthy of its subject. Drawing on private letters and papers, and with the unflinching co-operation of Daphne du Maurier’s family, Margaret Forster explores the secret drama of her life – the stifling relationship with her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier; her troubled marriage to war hero and royal aide, ‘Boy’ Browning; her wartime love affair; her passion for Cornwall and her deep friendships with the last of her father’s actress loves, Gertrude Lawrence, and with an aristocratic American woman.
Most significant of all, Margaret Forster ingeniously strips away the relaxed and charming facade to lay bare the true workings of a complex and emotional character whose passionate and often violent stories mirrored her own fantasy life more than anyone could ever have imagined.
About the Author
Born in Carlisle, Margaret Forster is the author of many successful novels – including Lady’s Maid, Have the Men Had Enough?, The Memory Box, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, Keeping the World Away, and most recently Over – as well as bestselling memoirs, and biographies of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Daphne du Maurier. She is married to writer and journalist Hunter Davies and lives in London and the Lake District.
Also by Margaret Forster
FICTION
Dame’s Delight
Georgy Girl
The Bogeyman
The Travels of Maudie Tipstaff
The Park
Miss Owen-Owen is At Home
Fenella Phizackerley
Mr Bone’s Retreat
The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury
Mother Can You Hear Me?
The Bride of Lowther Fell
Marital Rites
Private Papers
Have the Men Had Enough?
Lady’s Maid
The Battle for Christabel
Mothers’ Boys
Shadow Baby
The Memory Box
Diary of an Ordinary Woman
Is There Anything You Want?
Keeping the World Away
Over
NON-FICTION
The Rash Adventurer: The Rise and Fall of Charles Edward Stuart
William Makepeace Thackeray: Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman
Signficant Sisters: The Grassroots of Active Feminisim 1838–1939
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Hidden Lives
Rich Desserts & Captain’s Thin: A Family & Their Times 1831–1931
Precious Lives
Good Wives?: Mary, Fanny and Me, 1845–2001
POETRY
Selected Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Editor)
Daphne du Maurier
Margaret Forster
For Joyce Blake (who first aroused my interest in biography) and in memory of Phyllis Wynne (who first aroused my interest in the novels of Daphne du Maurier).
List of Illustrations
1. Gerald du Maurier, Daphne’s father, in 1905.
2. Her mother, Muriel, before she gave up acting.
3. The du Maurier family in the garden of Cannon Hall, Hampstead.
4. Fernande Yvon c. 1928. (Doubleday & Co. Inc.)
5. Daphne with her two sisters. (International Illustrations)
6. Frederick Browning with his mother and sister.
7. Daphne’s cousin Geoffrey Millar. (Doubleday & Co. Inc.)
8. Daphne in 1929 (with Carol Reed below).
9. Daphne rowing herself from Fowey to Ferryside.
10. Maureen Luschwitz (Hulton Deutsch Collection)
11. ‘Tommy’ Browning, the immaculate Grenadier Guards officer.
12. Daphne with Tessa, December 1933.
14. Daphne’s friends in Cornwall: Foy Quiller-Couch, (Enone Rashleigh, and others (Courtesy of G. Symondson)
15. Menabilly. (© Christian Browning)
16. Daphne with her three children, c. 1943. (Hulton Deutsch Collection)
17. In the nursery at Menabilly. (Hulton Deutsch Collection)
18. Daphne walking in the Menabilly woods with her children (Life Magazine, Time & Life Ltd)
19. Ellen Doubleday. (Courtesy Ellen M. Violett)
20. Daphne working in her hut at Menabilly. (© Tom L. Blau, Camera Press)
21. Gertrude Lawrence.
22. Daphne at a Doubleday party.
23. Daphne with Frank Price of Doubleday.
24. Daphne and Tommy on board Jeanne d’Arc. (Hulton Deutsch Collection)
25. Walking with Tommy at Menabilly, 1959. (Hulton Deutsch Collection)
26. Kits at the wheel of his first car. (Hulton Deutsch Collection)
27. Daphne with her two daughters in the mid 1960s. (© Tom L. Blau, Camera Press)
28. Olive White before her marriage to Kits Browning (and inset with him later).
29. Daphne playing cricket with her grandson Rupert. (© Tom L. Blau, Camera Press)
30. Daphne walking up from Pridmouth Beach with her children, 1946.
31. The same scene thirty years on with Kits and his family.
32. On the rocks below Kilmarth.
33. Daphne in 1985, three years before her death. (© Bob Collins)
Every attempt has been made to trace sources of photographs but in some cases this has proved impossible. Where sources are not credited above, photographs have been supplied by the Browning family and are reproduced with their kind permission.
Acknowledgements
Since Daphne du Maurier’s letters and papers are all in private hands, with the exception of a small collection of some correspondence with her publisher Victor Gollancz during the fifties (which is in the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick), these acknowledgements also act as source material notes.
The full co-operation of Daphne du Maurier’s children has been essential. Between them they possess documentation for the whole of their mother’s life, including her letters from the age of five, and also letters of Gerald du Maurier’s, together with many covering the life of their father Lt.-Gen. Browning. Apart from those letters written to each of them by their mother, they hold letters to Maud Waddell (Tod), Daphne’s governess; to Mlle Fernande Yvon; to her mother Lady du Maurier; to her sister-in-law Grace Browning; and to Augustus and Ina Agar.
There are also important collections of letters belonging to people outside the family, and I am grateful for access to them. For access to the correspondence between Daphne du Maurier and Ellen Doubleday special thanks to the latter’s daughter, Ellen M. Violett, Curator of the Ellen Doubleday Collection (Princeton University); thanks to Guy Symondson for letters to his mother’s cousin Foy Quiller-Couch; Garth Lean for his own letters from Daphne, covering the MRA years; Michael Thornton for his own letters; and John Williams for letters to his mother Evie Williams, Gertrude Lawrence’s secretary in England.
Other people who have kindly shared their letters from Daphne, and often their personal memories, with me are Bunny Austin, Henrietta Stapleton-Bretherton, Elizabeth Divine, Antonia Fraser, Bridget Graham, Doe Howard, Cynthia Millar, Lord Montgomery, John Prescott (to his mother Karen Prescott), Œnone Richardson (neé Rashleigh), Laila Spence (to her late husband Kenneth), Dorothy Sheppard, Douglas Symington (to his father J. A. Symington), Ellen M. Violett and Lady Wolfenden.
Daphne du Maurier’s publishers Victor Gollancz Ltd have generously allowed me to study their extensive files, and I thank Livia Gollancz and Stephen Bray for this permission. Curtis Brown Ltd, Daphne’s agent for virtually the whole of her career, have also allowed me access to their files, and I thank Anthea Morton-Saner for arranging this. Jane Holah, Group Librarian of the Octopus Publishing Group, has kindly supplied me with publication details, from the Heinemann files, of Daphne’s first three novels.
Apart from these letters I have learned a great deal of importance in conversation with members of the du Maurier and Browning families and with Daphne du Maurier’s friends and those who worked for her. Angela and Jeanne du Maurier have helped me with early memories, and Daphne’s grandchildren with more recent ones. But it is to her three children, Tessa (Lady Montgomery), Flavia (Lady Leng) and Kits (Christian Browning), that I am most indebted. They have spent many hours answering questions and have provided me with introductions to people in their mother’s life whom it would have been otherwise quite impossible for me
I am grateful to the following people who have given me so much of their time to talk about Daphne and about her husband: Michael Williams, Sheila Bush, Liz Calder, Lord Carrington, Maj.-Gen. C. M. F. Deakin, Lady Donaldson, Margaret Eglesfield, Richard Elsden, Rena M. Fairley (who talked to me about her cousin Maud Waddell), Mary Fox, Patricia Frere, Joanna Goldsworthy, Giles Gordon, Anne Griffiths, Brian and Pauline Johnston, John Knight, Garth and Margo Lean, Dr Martin Luther, Oriel Malet, Lord Montgomery, Margaret Netherton, Mike Parker, Janet Puxley (who talked to me about her late husband’s family and the background to Hungry Hill), Gladys Powell, Veronica Rashleigh, Margaret Robertson, A. L. Rowse, Elizabeth Spillane, Guy and Kate Symondson, Alastair Tower, Mary Varcoe, Ellen M. Violett, Sir Brian Warren, Major (retd) S. Weaver and Noël Welch.
Others who answered questions by letter are H.R.H. Prince Philip; Canon Denys and Mr Hubert Browning (from New Zealand); and Terry Jones (from Canada); George Bott, Lavinia Greacen, Ian Hamilton, Patricia Hastings, Ken McCormick, Sir Oliver Millar, the late Matthew Norgate, John Reece, Mrs Milton Runyon, Michael Thornton, Michael Trinick, Nicholas Wapshott and Oscar Yerburgh.
I thank the following people for permission to look round the houses where Daphne du Maurier lived: Angela Hodges (Cumberland Terrace, Regents Park); Jane Simpson (Cannon Hall); Angela du Maurier (Ferryside); Veronica Rashleigh (Menabilly and Kilmarth).
Special mention should be made of Esther Rowe, Daphne’s housekeeper for thirty-one years, who has been unstinting in her help both by letter and in interviews.
Daphne du Maurier’s literary executors are her son Kits, and Monty Baker-Munton, husband of Maureen Luschwitz, General Browning’s Staff Officer (PA), who returned with him in 1946. Daphne had implicit trust in Monty and involved him in her business affairs from 1960 onwards. Both he and Maureen became close friends and were depended upon to a great extent. I am deeply indebted to both of them for the time and trouble they have taken to assist me.
Finally, I would like to say how much it has mattered to me to have an agent, a publisher, an editor and a typist all as enthusiastic about a project as mine have been. Tessa Sayle, Carmen Callil, Alison Samuel and Gertrud Watson have shown a curiosity about, and interest in, the life of Daphne du Maurier which has very nearly matched my own and has been far beyond the call of any duty. It has greatly added to the pleasure of writing this book.
* * *
fn1 Letter to Ellen Doubleday, 3 February 1949.
PART ONE
The Golden Girl
1907–1932
Chapter One
SHEET-LIGHTNING SPLIT THE sky over London on the evening of 12 May 1907 and thunder rumbled long into the night. All day it had been hot and sultry, the trees in Regent’s Park barely moving and a heat haze obscuring the new growth of leaves. Then, towards dawn the next day, the weather began to change. A wind picked up and by afternoon the rain had begun, light at first, but by 5.20, when Muriel du Maurier gave birth to her second daughter, heavy and persistent, bringing with it the relief of much cooler weather. The theatres, which had played to poor audiences because of the heat, were once more almost full. Marie Tempest starred in The Truth at the Comedy, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in Julius Caesar at Her Majesty’s, and at the Hicks Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue Gerald du Maurier was scoring an immense success, the night his new daughter was born, in a light comedy entitled Brewster’s Millions.
But his success, in the kind of part which had made his name, had begun to bore him. Gerald’s whole life was the theatre, in which he had always seemed extremely happy and confident, but during the last few years he had decided that he had come to hate both acting and the theatre itself. In July 1906, while his wife Muriel was staying on the Isle of Wight with her two-year-old first child Angela, Gerald confided in a letter that he ‘loathed acting and actors’. He longed to join his little family on holiday and could hardly bear to be without them – ‘I hate living alone . . . it is dreadful waking up and no blessed angel.’ He could never sleep when his wife was away – ‘I thought I would be a good boy last night, so I had a mug of cocoa and went to bed early. Never again. I slept for five minutes between four and five . . .’ He thought of Muriel all the time, swimming and sunbathing, concerned that she might be ‘getting brown – don’t you go and overdo it – I love you most looking fragile’. She was, he wrote, ‘the only real thing in this world and I get a sort of pain in my heart when you’re not near’. This pain made him reluctant to allow even the briefest of separations, and every reunion was ecstatic. When he joined Muriel in August 1906 he wrote he would ‘faint when I see you’, so overwhelming was his passion. The thought of this love ever fading made him feverish – ‘I only pray from my soul that I may make you always happy and keep your wonderful love to the end.’
Supremely conscious that he had at last been fortunate, after two ill-fated liaisons,1 he was always anxious that Muriel should know she was appreciated. ‘Muriel, I love you,’ he had written when they married in 1903. ‘It is a splendid thing that has happened to us both, dearest, and I do hope the Great Spirit will bless us. It’s by our truth, loyalty and devotion to each other that we shall accomplish a beautiful life and with such love as we have for each other, dear dear Muriel, it should not be difficult . . . I seem to love you in all ways, as a child, as a boy, as a grown man – simply, passionately and sensibly, and with it all there is a sweet sense of security.’
The most telling phrase of all was Gerald’s longing for ‘a sweet sense of security’, so vital to his well-being. His upbringing as the youngest of the five children of George and Emma du Maurier had been utterly secure, but suddenly, in April of this very year, 1907, fate had dealt the first of several blows to the du Maurier family. Arthur Llewelyn Davies,2 husband of Sylvia, Gerald’s second eldest sister, had died, after months of agony, of cancer of the jaw. The anguish of this death, and Sylvia’s grief, had obliged Gerald to be more of a ‘grown man’ than the boy he preferred still to think himself.
He was thirty-four years old when this tragedy happened, but until then had always managed to go through life in an entirely light-hearted way, his mother’s ‘ewe lamb’, everyone’s favourite. He was Gerald the joker, Gerald the debonair, Gerald the charmer, a man who had been spared responsibility in life and had always taken advantage of this. But with Arthur’s death, Sylvia’s misery and the pathos of five young nephews left fatherless, Gerald had just begun to see the world differently. His own new-found happiness was threatened by the evidence of what had happened to Arthur, and when, in 1910, Sylvia herself also died of breast cancer, he discovered it was not, after all, going to be so easy to preserve the ‘beautiful life’ he had promised Muriel. Golden lads and lasses also came to dust, and rather sooner, and much more terrifyingly, than he had ever imagined.
So Daphne du Maurier was born at a time when her father’s personality had begun to change. This manifested itself in small ways at first – sudden, brief moments of ‘moodiness’, as it was called – then more markedly. Gerald could now seem uncharacteristically ‘low’ for days at a time, when he was not actually on the stage, and he would sometimes openly sigh and confess he felt unhappy, but so lugubrious was his expression that his family were convinced he was being intentionally funny. After all, what did he have to be depressed about? He was successful in his work, happy in his home life at 24 Cumberland Terrace, Regent’s Park, where Daphne was born. Up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Gerald was leaping ahead, moving from being primarily an actor to being an actor-manager, who shared in the profits. He went into partnership with Frank Curzon and stamped his mark on their productions at Wyndham’s Theatre. There was nothing at all for him to worry about.
