by Jane Dunn
Daphne’s last visit to Angela at Ferryside, a weekly routine that would not be allowed to lapse, however weak she had become, was memorable to those who cared for Angela. It was a cold spring day and Daphne could barely climb the stairs. When she arrived in Angela’s room, and divested herself of layers of coats and scarves that were dropped to the floor, she slowly advanced to where her sister sat and painfully leant over to give her the customary kiss. Angela sat upright and, difficult as Daphne found it to reach her without falling, her elder and more robust sister did not incline towards her to meet her halfway. Angela was receiving the obeisance due to her as the eldest, ‘Esau-ing’ as Daphne so evocatively had called it, and Daphne concurred, even if it took her last shred of energy. She may have won all life’s prizes, but at the end, in the visceral hierarchy of sisters, Angela came first, and neither of them ever forgot that.
Daphne, however, was the first of the sisters to die, at the age of eighty-one. On 19 April 1989, just before her breakfast tray arrived at her bedroom door – another of her lifelong traditions – Daphne lay back on her pillows and closed her eyes for the last time. To the end she had remained the captain of her soul.
Her sisters meanwhile lived on without her. Jeanne had the advantage of a younger partner and was cared for by Noël to the end. She too died in her own home, in the depth of the winter on 12 January 1997 when she was eighty-five. It was from there that six days later the Benedictine monks of Buckfast Abbey bore her coffin up to her favourite tor on the moors and interred her on her own land, as she had intended.
Angela outlived them all. Caring for her in Ferryside became too difficult given the house’s precipitous stairs and its distance from Daphne’s children, her only remaining family, and she was moved into a care home in London to be closer to Tessa. She was delighted, however, that Kits and his family would take on her beloved house and fill it with young people once more. Eventually she died on 5 February 2002, just a month before her ninety-eighth birthday. Her body was brought back to Cornwall and buried in the beautiful waterside churchyard of St Winnow that had meant so much to her in life. Jeanne and Angela had the consolations of their faith and a belief that death would reunite them at last with those they loved. Daphne was intellectually curious and naturally sceptical, and never quite so sure of anything, but she too liked the idea of the dear dead ‘beaming down’ and even entertained the thought that Tommy, her father and grandfather, might in some way be close to her again. But, in truth, she had always believed that life was what you dreamed into being; through imagination and force of will you could make of it what you chose. In contemplating death she wrote:
It is as though every human being born into this world burns, for a brief moment like a star, and because of it a pinpoint of light shines in the darkness, and so there is glory, so there is life. If there is nothing more than this, we have achieved our immortality.2
PICTURE SECTION
The sisters’ grandfather George du Maurier, celebrated artist and author of Trilby, sitting at the desk on which he drew his cartoons for Punch.
The sisters’ father Gerald du Maurier as a young actor in the early 1900s.
The sisters’ mother Muriel Beaumont as an ingénue actress before she became Mrs Gerald du Maurier.
Jeanne, Angela and Daphne with their father outside their London house at 24 Cumberland Terrace, opposite Regent’s Park, about 1914.
Gerald du Maurier at Westminster Cathedral for Sarah Bernhardt’s memorial service on 10 April 1923, the year after he was knighted.
Jeanne, Muriel and Daphne on a stone garden seat with their terrier Brutus, in 1922 when Jeanne was eleven and Daphne fifteen.
Daphne, Jeanne and Angela circa 1917, only a few months before they sat for the large group portrait of the sisters by Frederic Whiting (reproduced on this book’s jacket and in the colour picture section).
Gerald playing the possessive father with Daphne, at nineteen already in secret rebellion.
Jeanne studio portrait about 1923, aged twelve.
Angela studio portrait taken in the early thirties, when she was beginning to find purpose and love.
Mlle Fernande Yvon, ‘Ferdy’, the directrice at Daphne’s finishing school near Paris, and her first love; here circa 1928, when she was running her own school and had become a friend.
Twenty-year-old Angela playing Wendy Darling in the production of Peter Pan at the Adelphi, with Gladys Cooper as Peter.
Naomi ‘Micky’ Jacob, ‘with a head like Beethoven’ – actress, writer, radio personality and stalwart friend of Angela’s until Micky’s death at her home in Italy in 1964.
Betty Hicks, friend of Angela’s from girlhood.
Anne Treffry, photographed by Angela at Place, Anne’s house in Fowey.
Bo Foster, photographed by Angela.
Brigit Patmore, literary mentor, photographed by Angela during her visit to Ferryside.
The actress Mary Newcomb, photographed by Angela in the garden at Stinsford, Mary’s country house in Dorset where Angela spent many months in the thirties.
‘Little and Large’: Angela with Angela Halliday, her ‘twin’ and lifelong friend.
The South African actress Marda Vanne with Angela at Marda and Gwen Ffrangcom-Davies’s country cottage at Tagley in Essex.
Betty Williams, whose long-term friendship with Angela began after she wrote a fan letter to her about her memoir, It’s Only the Sister.
The actor Geoffrey Millar rehearsing at Wyndam’s Theatre. Cousin of the du Maurier sisters, he was twenty-two years older than Daphne, and became infatuated with her when she was fourteen.
Carol Reed, the son of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Daphne’s first boyfriend, here in 1929, aged twenty-two, like her. Later he became a film director famous for Odd Man Out, The Third Man and Oliver!, for which he won the Oscar for Best Director.
Henry ‘Christopher’ Puxley, romantic ‘soul mate’ of Daphne’s during the Second World War, spur to her imagination in writing Hungry Hill and Frenchman’s Creek.
The du Mauriers: Angela, Jeanne, their mother Muriel and Daphne – the model of a glamorous Edwardian family, circa 1912.
A particularly large group painting of the sisters with their dog Brutus by society portraitist Frederic Whiting (painted in 1918, purportedly on Hampstead Heath, but actually in his studio). Angela never liked the way she was portrayed as rather shapeless and with a shiny nose, to be compared unfavourably for ever with her younger sister: ‘Daphne looking rather like a flaming shining Jeanne d’Arc.’
This cartoon of Gerald du Maurier was drawn for Vanity Fair by Leslie Ward, known as ‘Spy’, the most celebrated Vanity Fair artist and cartoonist of the time. This appeared in the Christmas edition of 1907, the year Daphne was born, with Gerald’s career on a rapid upward trajectory after the triumph of playing Raffles, the gentleman thief, and Brewster in Brewster’s Millions.
Daphne’s appearance on the cover of The Bystander on 15 May 1929, the week of her twenty-second birthday, to celebrate the publication of her short story ‘And Now to God the Father’ (written to amuse her atheist father), emphasised how much their famous name and a well-connected family helped the sisters’ early careers. Uncle Willie Beaumont had just been appointed editor of The Bystander.
A controversial painting: the exhibition label on the back declares it to be a portrait by Jeanne du Maurier ‘of the artist’s sister Daphne’, the exhibition dates 1936–1939. This painting was bought by a dealer from a London auction house as part of a collection of pictures. Neither Noël Welch nor Kits Browning thought it to be a work by Jeanne. But Ann and David Willmore, Daphne du Maurier enthusiasts and owners of Bookends of Fowey, now own it and consider it authentic. Jeanne is, after all, an unlikely artist for anyone to forge.
The Bird Cage and Mimosa, two of Jeanne’s paintings bought by the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, The Bird Cage in 1979, Mimosa in 1963.
Gerald du Maurier and Gertrude Lawrence, his ‘last actress love’, i
n John van Druten’s play Behold We Live performed at St James’s Theatre in 1932. Gertrude was thirty-four and Gerald fifty-nine with only two more years to live.
Lawrence starred in September Tide in 1948, Daphne’s play that explored her own fascination with Ellen Doubleday. Initially dismayed by the casting of Gertrude, ‘a hardened dyed haired tart’, Daphne’s obsession for Ellen became partially transferred to her leading lady during the rehearsal and run of the play.
Daphne with Kits, and Flavia in the background, at a window at Menabilly, the house near Fowey she loved. She lived there from 1942 until the summer of 1969.
Daphne, Kits and Flavia picnicking on Menabilly Beach at Polridmouth Bay in 1947.
The view from Ferryside of Fowey, Polruan and the estuary leading to the sea. This was the house that changed the sisters’ lives, that offered freedom and creative inspiration and began their lifelong love of Cornwall and its coast. As Daphne wrote: ‘The lights of Polruan and Fowey. Ships anchored, looking up through blackness. The jetties, white with clay. Mysterious shrouded trees, owls hooting, the splash of muffled oars in lumpy water … All I want is to be at Fowey. Nothing and no one else. This, now, is my life.’
Torosay Castle on the Isle of Mull, photographed by Angela from the famous Statue Walk when she was staying during the Second World War.
Olive Guthrie, laird of Torosay, with Impy her Pekinese, on the terrace of Torosay Castle overlooking Duart Bay, with fourteenth-century Duart Castle on the distant promontory.
Jeanne and the painter Dod Procter.
Jeanne’s lifetime partner, the poet Noël Welch.
Jeanne with Angela’s Pekinese Wendy among the sunflowers in her market garden at Pont, which she worked during the Second World War.
Jeanne helping to bring in the harvest during their war work in Cornwall.
Angela helping to bring in the harvest during their war work in Cornwall.
Daphne studio portrait taken about 1949.
Angela with Angela Halliday’s MG Midget car in which they were travelling (with Wendy the Peke) when involved in a serious car crash on their way to Scotland.
Cannon Hall in Hampstead, bought by Gerald at the height of his success as an actor-manager. It was the sisters’ family home until he died in 1934.
Menabilly, the house Daphne loved and eventually leased and lived in with her family. The main inspiration for Rebecca’s Manderley and the storyline of The King’s General.
Lieutenant-General Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning in 1944. Twelve years earlier Daphne had asked him to marry her less than ten weeks after they first met. A decorated war hero of both world wars, he was known to Daphne and his family as ‘Tommy’ and later nicknamed ‘Moper’ by her.
Daphne and Tommy with their children (from left) Kits, Tessa and Flavia Browning, in front of Menabilly in the autumn of 1944.
Ellen Doubleday, wife of Angela’s and Daphne’s US publisher and Daphne’s creative obsession, confidante and friend.
Daphne meeting Gertrude Lawrence at Waterloo from the Mauretania boat train when she returned to England from New York in 1948 to star in Daphne’s play September Tide, in the part inspired by Ellen Doubleday.
Maud ‘Tod’ Waddell sketching. Governess to the du Maurier sisters and later to Daphne’s children, she was redoubtable, adventurous, loyal, and loved Daphne from when she first met her as a girl of eleven until Tod’s own death sixty-four years later (at the age of ninety-five).
Daphne rowing across Fowey harbour to Ferryside.
FOOTNOTES
fn1 A popular novel written by Mabel Barnes-Grundy, published in 1922.
fn2 Stories circulated of her mental disintegration, claiming she was drugged and had to be propped up to have the noose put round her neck and then in a final horrific detail, it was said, she had suffered a miscarriage as she fell through the drop. Her execution had not only haunted the witnesses, but also fuelled a great convulsion of outrage in wider society against the death penalty, and against killing women in particular.
fn3 The equivalent of £22,300 if calculated on the Retail Price Index; £95,500 if compared with average earnings.
fn4 Worth just over £3,000 using the Retail Price Index; nearly £13,000 if compared with average earnings.
fn5 Cubbing was a form of autumn hunting aimed at teaching young hounds how to hunt and kill and dispersing young foxes from their usual territory into a wider area.
fn6 Angela did heavily censor her autobiography but it turned out far from dull.
fn7 The Duveen brothers were extremely successful (and controversial) art dealers responsible for helping to build some of the great American private collections. Kenneth Clark was a leading academic, writer and art historian, eventually made world famous by his epic series for the BBC, Civilisation.
fn8 Mullach or Mullagh is Gaelic for Mull.
fn9 Druces Depository was a large furniture and textiles showroom on the corner of Baker Street and Blandford Street. The warehouse was full of antiques, furniture, bedding and carpets and was largely destroyed in this bombing raid and the pretty nineteenth-century façade reduced to a charred skeleton.
fn10 During the Irish boom years, restoration of this massive historic ruin was undertaken with the idea of creating Ireland’s first six-star hotel, but by 2010 the money had run out on the €50,000,000 project and the mansion was shut up with ninety per cent of the restoration complete.
NOTES
All extracts from letters, poems and fiction and non-fiction titles by Angela du Maurier are reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd London on behalf of The Chichester Partnership and are the copyright of Angela du Maurier.
Poems and other papers relating to Angela du Maurier are in the du Maurier Manuscript Collections, Heritage Collections, University of Exeter, reference EUL MS 207/5.
All extracts from letters, poems and fiction and non-fiction titles by Daphne du Maurier are reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd London on behalf of The Chichester Partnership and are the copyright of Daphne du Maurier.
Letters to Maud Waddell (‘Tod’), Lady du Maurier, copies of letters to Foy Quiller-Couch, letter to Tessa Browning, letters to Evie Williams are in the du Maurier Manuscript Collection, Heritage Collections, University of Exeter, reference EUL MS 207/2, EUL MS 307/2/1/3.
The unpublished diaries of Sir Cecil Beaton published by permission of the Masters and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge, © The Literary Executors of the late Sir Cecil Beaton.
Abbreviations used in the Notes:
DdM – Daphne du Maurier
ED – Ellen Doubleday
CB – Unpublished diaries of Sir Cecil Beaton, Library at St John’s College, Cambridge
DMM – Du Maurier Manuscript Collection, Heritage Collections, University of Exeter
GFD – Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies manuscripts, Martial Rose Library, University of Winchester
PREFACE
1Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites (London, 1973), p. 21.
2Edited Nigel Nicolson, Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell (London, 1982), 2 Jun 1926, Letters Vol. III, p. 271.
3Angela du Maurier, It’s Only the Sister (Truro, 2003), p. 21.
4Ibid., p. 156.
5Daphne du Maurier, Growing Pains (London, 1997), p. 95.
CHAPTER ONE: The Curtain Rises
1 Daphne du Maurier, The Du Mauriers (London, 2004), p. 19.
2 J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (London, 1988), p. 12.
3 Daphne du Maurier, Gerald (London, 1970), p. 86.
4 Only the Sister, p. 14.
5 Ibid., p. 11.
6 Ibid., p. 13.
7 Barrie, Peter Pan, p. 158.
8 Angela du Maurier, Old Maids Remember (London, 1966), p. 23.
9 Only the Sister, pp. 32, 33.
10 Ibid., p. 31.
11 Growing Pains, pp. 24–5.
12 Only the Sister, p. 14.
13 Growing Pains, p. 22.
14 Only the Sister, p. 11.
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