2022 is the 115th anniversary of Daphne du Maurier's birth. Stephen Roberts explores her life, works, and dramatic inspiration for Jamaica Inn.
A Londoner by birth, but Daphne du Maurier must have had a Cornish transfusion at some point as she undoubtedly had Kernow blood coursing through her veins.
Born 115 years ago this year, du Maurier was far more than a ‘romantic novelist’, her work imbued with Gothic edginess, suspense, and twists and turns made her a one of the most successful and beloved writers whose work straddled popular with the literary. She also wrote plays, historical fiction, biographies and a travel guide; she was nothing if not versatile.
Daphne was the daughter of stage actress Muriel Beaumont (1876-1957) and actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier (1873-1934) who specialised in criminal roles, starting with Raffles (1906), and the granddaughter of the flamboyantly-named George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier (1834-96) which was a signature and a half. Grandad George was a Parisian born artist, Punch illustrator and writer, but also the grandson himself of émigrés who’d fled to England at the time of the Revolution. Daphne was the middle daughter of three.
If anyone thought ‘Daphne du Maurier’ was a writer’s nom de plume and it certainly sounds like it could have been, well, you were emphatically wrong. That was indeed her given name. Not only did she have the name for a writer but she had the familial background too. Her granddad got the credit for one of the stunning literary success stories of the 1890s, the novel Trilby (1894), which was also adapted to the stage. As you may have surmised, it gave us the name of a popular titfer. Daphne outshone all her family as her books sold in their millions and film adaptations won rave reviews. She didn’t forget who she owed her success too though and Daphne wrote a biography of her own father, Gerald: a Portrait (1934), published in the year he died.
Although she was born in London, Daphne’s childhood years were spent in Fowey, a part of Cornwall that she’d return to and which would inspire much of her best work: The Loving Spirit (1931); Jamaica Inn (1936); and Frenchman’s Creek (1941) to name but three. The story goes that Daphne was out riding on Bodmin Moor when she got lost one stormy night and came across the inn; an island in a storm. She’d come to Cornwall in 1926, aged 19, to Looe to be precise, with her mother and two sisters on a house-hunting expedition. They were looking for something suitable for family hols and thanks to her film star father the asking price wasn’t to get in the way. Not finding what they were looking for in Looe the real estate therapists just moved down the coast to Fowey where they settled on ‘Swiss Cottage’, later renamed ‘Ferryside’, a house right next to the ferry on the Bodinnick side of the water. The Loving Spirit would be written in this house, which was also the setting for her first meeting with her future husband who’d been enterprisingly sailing with a mate in Fowey harbour.
She didn’t have to be in Cornwall though to write her best work. Perhaps the most famous and celebrated of all her works is Rebecca (1937) but it wasn’t penned in what had become her homeland. She wrote it in Alexandria (Egypt) where she’d followed her husband when the Army officer was stationed there. Absence makes the heart fonder though and the famous ‘Manderley’ of the novel was based on Daphne’s own Cornish home, Menabilly.
Other locations that permeated Daphne’s novels were Polridmouth Cove, the setting for Rebecca’s boathouse and Trelowarren House on the Lizard (Navron House in Frenchman’s Creek), which she’d first visited aged 23 in 1930. Clara Vyvyan, the lady of the house, would become one of her closest friends and would also unwittingly provide the inspiration for Frenchman’s Creek: It was whilst visiting Lady Clara that Daphne discovered this special place on the Helford River. It would be where Daphne and her husband honeymooned, and therefore rather sweetly too the setting for her only fictional romance.
Daphne’s marriage to Frederick Browning certainly came about in romantic fashion. Inspired by The Loving Spirit to visit Cornwall and immerse himself in the landscapes the book had conjured for him, Browning then discovered that the author lived in the area, so he extended an invitation. This may sound a little irregular and du Maurier put him in his place by turning down his offer of marriage, not being a great believer in the institution, She later relented and proposed herself and they were married in July 1932, within a year of Browning’s trip to the far south west. The marriage took place at Lanteglos church, above Bodinnick, at 8.15am, the early start arranged so guests could ‘catch the tide’, the way of the water being important hereabouts. They’d go on to have three children together.
That love of Cornwall focused on Daphne’s renting and restoration of Menabilly, the country estate that she spotted shortly after arriving at Ferryside and later adopted as her own (from 1943). She claimed that she loved Menabilly more than she loved other people. The house not only inspired Manderley but also featured in another story, The King’s General (1946), set during the English Civil War and including supposedly real-life happenings, such as the skeleton of a Cavalier discovered ‘sitting’ in a secret room (I surmise in hiding from Roundheads). I have to say, that sounds uncannily like a similar story I’ve heard about a house in the Cotswolds, except there the skeletal refugee was caught out during the Wars of the Roses. It’s a good yarn nevertheless.
While many of her books attract new generations of fans, many more people have been entertained by Daphne’s stories, without even realising it. Alfred Hitchcock was a particular fan and gave us a healthy trio to enjoy, Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, and The Birds. I think of the latter whenever I venture into the back garden and find 15 pigeons on my lawn. Don’t Look Now (1970) is a book I’ve read and enjoyed, a masterful slow-burner of a tragic mystery set in Venice, then quickly made into a film (1973) by Nicolas Roeg. An earlier film, My Cousin Rachel (1952), was also based on a du Maurier short story, and starred Richard Burton. Daphne enjoyed both worldwide fame and achieved financial security in a way that she can only have dreamed of when she was younger and first starting out.
1969 was a bitter-sweet year for Daphne. It was the year she was made a Dame but also the year she lost her beloved Menabilly when the owners, the Rashleighs, declined to renew the lease forcing Daphne to move to another house on the estate, Kilmarth, which inspired The House on the Strand in the same year (and Tywardreath, just west of Fowey, translates literally as ‘The House on the Strand’). I guess that is one of the potential pitfalls of renting.
Significantly perhaps Daphne wrote hardly any fiction thereafter, her inspiration lost along with her spiritual home. It was not the only regret Daphne would have. The trouble with writing best-sellers is that people want to come and see the places where they were set. Sometimes huge numbers of literary tourists unwittingly engineer a change in the landscape as places adapt to cater for them, Jamaica Inn being a case in point. If Daphne was able to trot up there today on a windswept night she’d presumably have to find somewhere to tether her steed in among all the cars and coaches.
Daphne du Maurier’s husband died in 1965, which must have affected her profoundly, and left her alone for her last quarter-century and possibly more reclusive as she neared her end. I prefer to think she was just quite complex and all the more interesting for that. She died April 19 1989, aged 81, passing away in the county that had provided her with so much inspiration and pleasure.
