The Road to Manderley Eighty Years After Its Publication, Rebecca Continues to Enthral and Unsettle
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The road to Manderley Eighty years after its publication, Rebecca continues to enthral and unsettle. Flora Watkins explores our fascination with Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel and why Cornwall was a lifelong inspiration SINISTER tale about a woman Facing page: who marries a widower… Hitchcock’s 1940 Psychological and rather maca- film was suitably bre,’ wrote Daphne du Maurier Gothic, winning toA her publisher of the novel on which she the Oscar for was about to embark in 1937. On taking cinematography. delivery of Rebecca the following year, Left: Daphne du Victor Gollancz at once realised that his Maurier appeared young author had written the book that in COUNTRY LIFE on would launch her into the literary strato- July 18, 1947, as sphere. The novel’s ‘brilliantly created Lady Browning. atmosphere of suspense’, of which Gollancz Below: The 80th- enthused in his letter to booksellers, is anniversary edi- struck in that first, haunting line—‘Last tion of the novel night I dreamt I went to Manderley again’— and maintained tautly, expertly, through- out, until the book’s sudden ending. Rebecca sold 45,000 copies in the first month alone and has never gone out of print. It has inspired a sequel (by Susan Hill), a prequel (Sally Beauman) and numer- ous adaptations for stage and screen (most notably, Alfred Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning feature film of 1940). Last year, it was voted the nation’s favourite book of the past 225 years in a poll run by WHSmith. ‘It’s a puzzle,’ admits du Maurier’s son Kits Browning, leaning back at his desk at Ferryside, the house at Bodinnick-by- Fowey in Cornwall that the du Maurier family has owned since the 1920s and where the author penned her first novel. ‘I think the only quick explanation [for the book’s success] is that it’s a very good Ricardo possessed many Rebecca-like story.’ His mother, the literary executor The seed out of qualities: she was beautiful, dark and viva- discloses, ‘simply didn’t know why it should cious. Du Maurier, on the other hand, loathed have been the favourite of so many people’. which Rebecca grew the duties and the socialising expected of Put simply, Rebecca is a story about two came from du Maurier’s an officer’s wife—never more so than when women, a man and a house, the latter— her husband was posted to Egypt, as com- Manderley—invoked so intensely that it own marriage manding officer of his regiment. becomes a character in its own right. The ‘My grandmother could never quite let go nameless narrator is working as a lady’s grew came from an incident in her own of why this woman fascinated him so much,’ companion in the south of France when she marriage. Before he met du Maurier, when muses Rupert Tower, whose mother, Flavia, meets Maxim de Winter, rich, handsome still a major, the dashing Grenadier Guards is the middle sibling. Mr Tower is a Jungian and recently widowed. His sudden proposal officer Lt-Gen Sir Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, analyst and inherited his grandmother’s takes her back to his West Country estate, ‘Tommy’ to his family, had been engaged collection of Jung’s work. ‘Particularly when where the memory of his dead wife, Rebecca, to a glamorous woman, Jan Ricardo. she was taken away from Cornwall and was is kept alive by the forbidding housekeeper, ‘She was digging around in his desk and writing Rebecca in Alexandria, which she Mrs Danvers. ‘Little by little I want to build found these letters [from Ricardo] that, loathed, she felt really adrift,’ he continues. up the character of the first [wife] in the mind rather stupidly, he’d left,’ explains their ‘Somehow, the Jan Ricardo element then of the second,’ wrote du Maurier in her note- eldest daughter, Tessa, the Viscountess became so powerful that it needed to be book, ‘… until wife 2 is haunted day and night, Montgomery of Alamein. The letters, signed written into and thought about.’ then… Crash! Bang! Something happens.’ with a flourish, touched a nerve. Why had It may come as a surprise to readers to She described the book as ‘a study in jeal- Tommy been so attracted to this woman? learn that the writer, in possession of a con- SilverScreen/Alamy Stock Photo; Countryousy’, Life Picture Library/timeincukcontent but the seed out of which Rebecca Did he still think about her? By all accounts, siderable beauty and glamour herself (her ➢ 82 Country Life, May 30, 2018 www.countrylife.co.uk www.countrylife.co.uk Country Life, May 30, 2018 83 Discover du Maurier country One of the great joys of Daphne du Maurier’s novels is that the locations are ‘almost touchable’, enthuses Ann Willmore, who runs Bookends of Fowey (a haven for fans, 01726 833361; www.bookendsoffowey. com) and the www.dumaurier.org website. These are her recommend- ations for a literary pilgrimage l Rebecca Menabilly, also the setting of The King’s General and My Cousin Rachel, is private, but two cottages on the estate are available as holiday lets (01726 808150; www.menabilly. com). Polridmouth Cove (below), from where Rebecca sets out on her fateful sail, can be reached on foot, down a wooded farm track Entering the lion’s den: Maxim (Laurence All about Rebecca The “emotional Olivier) brings his bride (Joan Fontaine) l Frenchman’s Creek ❍ Although the setting is, unmistake- home to Manderley as the stony-faced Dona St Columb’s house, Navron, was based on Trelowarren (below), ably, the Menabilly estate near Fowey, experience” of Rebecca, Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson) looks on Cornwall isn’t mentioned in the novel the home of du Maurier’s great “particularly male- friend Lady Clara Vyvyan. The house For Mrs Danvers, the second Mrs de Winter is but a pale imitation of her beloved Rebecca ❍ Manderley itself is modelled on experience’ of it, ‘particularly the male- is private, but there are several luxury Milton Hall, near Cambridge, which female power-dynamics, speaks to us still’. female power-dynamics, holiday cottages to rent on the estate the author had visited as a child father was the actor Sir Gerald du Maurier, exquisitely evoking the Cornish landscape The influence of Rebecca is as pervasive (01326 221224; www.trelowarren. her grandfather, George, the Punch illus- and weather: ‘Wet earth… the sour tang of ❍ A forbidding housekeeper at Milton speaks to us still” and indelible as her signature, which so com). Frenchman’s Creek itself, trator and author of Trilby), identified with moorland peat… the smell of the flood tide.’ provided the inspiration for Mrs Danvers haunts the second Mrs de Winter, ‘black and a tributary of the Helford River, can the second wife. Meek and overawed, the Menabilly had been owned by the Rashleigh ❍ Maxim was called Henry in the are important today.’ It also, she muses, strong, the tall and sloping R dwarfing the be found on foot, or hire a boat at second Mrs de Winter bewails her gauche- family since Tudor times, but du Maurier was first draft, but du Maurier changed ‘reads quite differently a second time’—and other letters’. It is there in director Paul Helford Passage (01326 250770; ness, her lank hair and her bitten nails, in able to rent it from 1943 until 1969, when the it as it ‘sounded dull’ with age. ‘In the current climate [of #metoo], Thomas Anderson’s recent Oscar-nominated www.helford-river-boats.co.uk) comparison with Rebecca, whose very name, new heir wanted to move in. The house also Maxim seems quite dangerous.’ film Phantom Thread. Sarah Perry—author ❍ Agatha Christie was among the fans ‘written in a bold, slanting hand’, was ‘a sym- inspired her novels My Cousin Rachel and who wrote to the author asking why Virago’s editorial director, Donna Coonan, of last year’s must-read The Essex Ser- bol of herself, assured and confident’. The King’s General (see box). the narrator had no name agrees that the writer’s genius has been pent—declares in her introduction to the ‘Daphne is, of course, her,’ says Mr ‘My mother, as a child, remembers seeing overlooked. ‘When we started publishing new edition of Rebecca that ‘every novelist Browning. ‘The second Mrs de Winter bit her kiss the walls of Mena and whispering her in 2003, there were a lot [of cover illus- since has ground their teeth in envy’ at its came from having to cope with Dad’s softly “My house of secrets”,’ recalls Mr Tower. acclaim that it deserves. ‘The critics will trations] of women looking out to sea,’ she brilliance. Miss Coonan detects ‘a very army and all those boring drinks parties, ‘For her, it was like coming home to a place never forgive you for writing Rebecca,’ discloses. ‘She’d very much been dismissed strong thread’ of du Maurier in the current which were anathema to her,’ he chuckles. that reflected her inner nature.’ Living warned du Maurier’s great mentor Sir as an historical-romance writer—this is the ‘grip lit’ phenomenon. He also sees his mother in Rebecca, how- at Menabilly satisfied the author’s need for Arthur ‘Q’ Quiller-Couch. Contemporary woman who gave us The Birds and Don’t A new film is also in the works: Mr ever, in her boldness and fearlessness: ‘All space and solitude, earning her a reputation reviewers compared it unfavourably with Look Now. Her books are saturated with this Browning reveals that the book has been that being great with horses, and on the for reclusivity and adding to the mystery and Jane Eyre, dismissing the later work as disturbing atmosphere.’ Indeed, Frenchman’s optioned by Working Title and there is l boat—they are all things that Daphne was.’ fascination swirling around Rebecca.