dovegreyreader scribbles

Happy St Piran's Day : Vanishing Cornwall ~ Daphne du Maurier

Happy St Piran's Day everyone...

What do you mean 'Who is St Piran??'

St Piran is the patron saint of Cornish tin miners and that, coupled with the fact he allegedly died in Cornwall in 480, has all been enough for the county to adopt him as their saint of favour.

It's all a bit vague in the detail. St Piran probably born in Ireland but legend has it that the heathen Irish tied him to a millstone, rolled it over the cliff into a stormy sea, which immediately became calm. The saint floated safely across to land on the sandy beach of Perranzabuloe in Cornwall, where his first converts to Christianity were....er...animals.

More legend suggests that St Piran lit a fire on his blackstone hearth which, unbeknowest to him was a slab of tin-bearing ore. The heat caused smelting to take place and tin rose to the top in the form of a white cross which explains the Cornish flag (and my thanks to this website for that information) 

No matter the detail the Cornish flag will be flying everywhere today, Trelawney's Army will be out celebrating in force, and I claim an affinity given we are only about a mile from the border and look across to all things Cornwall every time we gaze out of the window.

It therefore seems like the perfect day to salute the Virago reprint of Daphne du Maurier's Vanishing Cornwall published this week. This is a book we have owned but which I hadn't read for years until I settled down with this new edition over the weekend.

First published in 1967, and at a time when the coffee table book was all the rage,Vanishing Cornwall is Daphne du Maurier's tribute to the county she loved and adopted as her own, the place she made her home, and the book itself her answer to the banality of the glossy volumes that were gracing said coffee tables. All showy pictures and little else of substance, Daphne would write the opposite; words that mattered and which would be complemented by her son Christian's photography. Daphne did her research and the two of them criss-crossed the county on the trail of the heart of Cornwall. The landscape that inspired her books with its rugged coastline and expansive beaches, the wild and desolate moorland, the traditions, the legends, the industry, the fishing, the gentry and the working people, all are represented here.

And let's not forget the weather. Cornwall has a climate of its very own, balmy when everywhere else may be icy, drenched in torrents of rain when everywhere else has blazing sunshine. The times we set off from home on what seems like a glorious day to head down into Cornwall for more of the same, only to find it shrouded in mizzly mist from Bodmin down. But since childhood holidays it has always struck me as a place of secret corners, amazing sights tucked away from the rest of the world, and though of course not much of it remains secret now it still has that air of mystery and the unknown about it.

Reading Vanishing Cornwall it is quite apparent that Daphne du Maurier had enormous and ongoing anxieties about the future of the county. How would it fare as its burgeoning popularity as a holiday destination grew, and Daphne equally worried about how she may have influenced that with her writing..

' As a motorist I pass by with some embarrassment, feeling myself to blame, for out of that November evening long ago came a novel which proved popular, passing, as fiction does, into the folklore of the district. As the author I am flattered, but as a one time wanderer dismayed.'

We pass that place of 'folklore' within twenty minutes of leaving home every time we head down into Cornwall too, and reading Vanishing Cornwall some forty-four years after it was first published, and living on the doorstep as we do, I can see that there are some interesting debates to be had about it all.

We also pass the signs to Warleggan  (yes, it is like driving through an episode of Winstons Graham's Poldark ...Demelza isn't that far away either) and now that I have read about the Reverend Frederick Densham, the vicar of Warleggan Parish in the 1920s I really would like to find it. Rev Densham apparently so terrifying and so barking mad that he had no congregation and was forced to make his own out of cardboard cut-outs. A young Daphne and some friends scaled the rectory wall and caught a glimpse of the incumbent pacing in his garden, and Daphne subsequently based a novel on it all... and I can't for the life of me think which it is ... one of you will know.

This is probably also a good time to flag up the 2012 Du Maurier Festival, 9th-20th May, the line-up has been announced and tickets go on sale soon. If I have a favourite and lesser known book of Daphne's it is The Scapegoat, making this event of particular interest...

“A major event of the 2012 Festival is a special advance screening of a new film version of Daphne du Maurier’s story The Scapegoat, commissioned by ITV and starring Matthew Rhys (from the hit US series Brothers & Sisters).  Prior to the showing of the film, a panel of actors and members of the production team will discuss the making of this imaginative re-working of du Maurier’s classic tale.  Joining them on the panel will be Christian Browning, son of Daphne du Maurier.”

For anyone with a day to spare I seem to have written quite a lot about Daphne over the years and have even remembered to tag it, so you will find it all here and including some forays down to the Du Maurier Festival in Fowey in previous years, plus I've had a trawl through the archives for some more Cornish reading, 

The Short Day Dying ~ Peter Hobbs

The Great Western Beach ~ Emma Smith

Held By the Sea ~ Jane Darke

Daphne ~ Justine Picardie
 
If you have any more suggestions please do add them in comments. 

Meanwhile I do hope you will all be tucking into an oggy wherever you are today, god bless St Piran. I expect he thought of those first too, and that thing about the crimped pastry being the bit for the tin miners to hold it with when their hands were dirty is a load of old invented modern-day poppycock.

 

 

 

The Doll - Short Stories ~ Daphne du Maurier

The du Maurier literary festival is always a sparkling event, one that lifts the spirits as the first of the season.

Perhaps it's the way the weather often drifts seamlessly from spring to early summer mid-festival, though this year we've been and done that twice and back again already down in the South West, or perhaps it's that welcome glimpse of the sea as you approach the town.

But every so often the festival dazzles a little more with the launch of a new book by or about Daphne du Maurier, a few years ago Justine Picardie's Daphne, this year a new collection of Daphne's short stories The Doll, making the Virago collection of Daphne du Maurier books now in print a sight to gladden the heart.

So getting in the Fowey mood (pronounced Foy for anyone not from these parts) I picked up my copy of The Doll and have been reading several a day for the last week or so in readiness for total du Maurier immersion this weekend.

The story behind this collection has been well-covered in the press here but it is lovely and worth repeating. Every trip to Fowey for us (it's about 45mins away) involves me popping my head around the door for a chat with Ann Willmore who runs Bookends, the town's secondhand bookshop (Mr Ann runs the town's other bookshop, Bookends Too, selling new books.)

I've mentioned Ann here before I know but there is absolutely nothing she doesn't know about Daphne du Maurier having been a collector and diligant researcher of information about her life and work for many years. I'm sure all you indie book owners out there offer a warm welcome to anyone who walks into your shop but there is nothing to beat Ann's open and smiling greeting and we settle down for a natter about the 'latest.' It is Ann who has tracked down some of the stories in this collection, many of them after years of painstaking effort, and discovered in obscure anthologies and magazines. When you are prepared to pay £70 for a 1932 copy of the Illustrated London News because it contains a Daphne story, it's clear you are dedicated to the cause and that astonishing story Happy Valley features on this collection. Read it and think of Daphne's discovery of Menabilly and see the foreshadowing of Manderly and Rebecca, it really is remarkable.

I had quite  forgotten what a brilliant practitioner of the art of the short story Daphne du Maurier is, having focused on catching up with her novels and more biographical books in recent years, but this collection fair took my breath away. All seem to have been written when Daphne was in her very early twenties and living in the 1920s, themes of entrapment and obsession move in tandem with those of vanity and hypocrisy whilst jealousy, infatuation and possession pervade. As I read I sensed a young and very fertile imagination ready and waiting to break through the boundaries that a privileged upbringing had chained so firmly in place around her life. A mind ready to rebel, to break the mould and do things differently.

In the event the young Daphne fought for, and won, a degree of freedom by living when she could in Fowey.

Far from the constraints of life in the Hampstead home and the claustrophobic company of her possessive father Gerald, and the mother with whom she was always at odds Daphne was free to write. Nowhere is that mother-daughter tension clearer than in the short story Tame Cat reminding me of Irene Nemirovsky's themes in Jezebel; the jealous and unforgiving mother with the fading looks and her scheming lover who insinuates his way into the naive and hapless daughter's affections. This is entrapment writ large and, as so often in this collection, a perfect delineation of the limitations set on women's lives, lives circumscribed by tradition and habit and bound by the lack of choice about their own destiny.

But Daphne interestingly walks a mile or two in some very different shoes here as well...who was it who said if you walk a mile in someone's shoes at least you are far enough away when they discover that you've stolen them??

Sorry, that's of no relevance, except the young Daphne transports herself into lives seemingly far removed from hers, there is lust and murder here along with prostitution and then there is the doll of the title story. The constant companion of the gifted female violinist, a male doll whom she introduces as Julius, and which she finds infinitely preferable to the real thing. There is destitution in these stories too, something Daphne can have known little about in her day to day life but in many ways perhaps she was more like her character Mazie than she cared to realize. As Mazie yearns for a different and better life and for freedom from the constraints of the present it's but a short step to understanding that this may have been Daphne's dream too. So a collection that may unwittingly reveal even more about an author I have come to know and love, and a very welcome addition to the oeuvre.

Ann's personal story, recounted in an interview in the Western Morning News recently, is also something of a dream come true... captivated by Daphne du Maurier and a regular visitor to Fowey for many years from the family home in St Albans, Ann and Mr Ann ( he's actually David and he's lovely too) chucked in jobs and sold up, moving down and buying Bookends when the business came up for sale eight years ago. Sadly I've met a lot of very grumpy booksellers in my time but Ann and David are life's happy people who have turned a hobby and a dream into a viable and enjoyable business which you sense gives them much pleasure, and it shows... no wonder Ann always has a beaming smile on her face when you walk in the door.

 

Sunday in Fowey - The Daphne du Maurier Festival

Thank you so much for all your kind wishes, the Tinker sends his gratitude and says how lovely it is to know you are all thinking of him.
Of course if you're going to do anything like this then Friday is not a good day to expect action so we hope for news of procedure schedule tomorrow.
Meanwhile he's been moved to the very swish new cardiac unit where we left him this afternoon inhaling the free oxygen, still talking fondly of the roast beef he'd had for dinner and figuring out his bedside internet and TV console and with that twinkle of nice new gadgetry to play with in his eye.
This morning however we ventured down to Fowey to catch the Virago event at the Du Maurier Literary Festival.
The sun always seems to shine in Fowey, the skies dazzle, the water shimmers and it was lovely to meet up with Justine Picardie again and Stella Duffy for the first time. Lisa Appignanesi author of Mad, Bad and Sad was the other member of the panel and I also met the wondrous Sophie from Virago. Sophie kindly keeps me informed about new books, never refuses my prize draw requests on your behalf and sends out books around the world to the winners.
There was a big hiccup with the book supply (Waterstone's) which sadly meant no copies of Justine's, Stella's or Lisa's books for sale and signing (which is surely the cue for Bookends the local independent bookshop run so diligently by Anne and David Willmore to have a book-selling presence at the event?) so it was a good thing I'd taken my annotated Stellas for a signature or she might just have squeamed 'til she was sthick.
We averted a scene anyway and waved The Room of Lost Things around so people knew what to go looking for (down in Bookends) and of course Stella laughed.
More about the event soon which was a celebration and panel discussion of the recent Virago publication of Breaking Point, a collection of some of Daphne du Maurier's darker short stories.
I hope to be back in Fowey on Friday to meet up with Amanda Craig and hear her talking about Hearts and Minds and Amanda does 'dovegreyreader asks...' this week too.
Meanwhile a few pictures of the day for you, some Cornish bright and light, me waiting for food (ignore my bruised post-op drip hand, and concentrate on catching a glimpse of the completed Noro Kureyon jacket) and what happens when you get home after an exhausting day, fancy eating crumpets and honey (because now you can) put them in the Aga for a few minutes to warm and remember them two hours later.

Sunday Salon - Party invite

One of the great and pleasurable reading experiences for me last year was my Daphne du Maurier revival. Sparked off by Justine Picardie's book Daphne and that was me up and running on a lovely read of some of Daphne's books I'd missed. I read for the first time The Scapegoat , The Loving Spirit, The Parasites and then re-read My Cousin Rachel and took in the very revealing volume of Daphne's letters to Oriel Malet too.
Then there was the Du Maurier LitFest down in Fowey, the Daphne weekend at Port Eliot and the event I did with Justine at Ways With Words at Dartington.
So bearing in mind that it is the dovegreyreader scribbles third blog birthday this week and not wishing to repeat last year's virtual party where certain people who shall be nameless but are called Sally :-) were sick on the blog carpet and had tantrums, I decided that we'd be grown up this year and invite a special guest.
This has all worked out perfectly because on the week that the paperback edition of Daphne is published I am delighted that Justine has agreed to do dovegreyreader asks... answering my usual nosey questions and will also pop in and out of comments during the day to chat and answer any questions you may have. Those who read Justine's blog will know that life has bowled her a few googlies of late so I am extra grateful to her for being here. We plan to plump up the cushions extra plumply and keep a steady flow of tea, scones and cream and of course a virtual birthday cake plus an added bonus, Rocky has agreed to be on virtual hand and purr contentedly at her feet. This usually rapidly converts to a very loud cat apnoea - induced, ninety decibel volume bout of snoring as he eventually rolls over and falls asleep, but we can but try to create the right ambience.
Bloomsbury have also kindly offered prize draw copies of Daphne so we'll be having ourselves a wonderful Daphne du Maurier happy blogbirthday Wednesday.

The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier

Confronted with accent and dialect when I open a novel may well be the quickest way to make me put it back on the shelf. I did this with Adam Bede countless times before I got a grip and within a matter of pages I was immersed and helplessly hooked into George Eliot's rural world. Likewise I struggle slightly with Wuthering Heights because of it.
The Colour Purple comes to mind as a modern-day equivalent, where would that book be without it? Then perhaps a lesser known book , Marriage by Susan Ferrier. It's possible to emerge the other end of that as a passable Scot,  and read aloud you will convince all around you of your acquired ancestry. I have a delectable old edition of Susan Ferrier's book along with a matching volume of her letters picked up as cheap as chips in a second hand bookshop but both inscribed by Humbert Wolfe, October 27th 1929
Having tried my hand with a mere morsel of Brin Swll speak a while ago, it's actually very difficult to do but, when written with an unforced ease and proficiency, accent and dialect the very things that pitch a narrative into  the precise territory an author wants it to go; to my mind 50% of the time and place location dilemma is sorted if this all sits comfortably as I read.
If dialect well-done is half the work completed then descriptive sense of place must fulfill the rest, so how does Daphne fare on both counts?
Daphne was legendary for her mastery of the opening and closing lines of her books and when you consider that The Loving Spirit was her first published attempt at fiction in 1931 this all surely bodes well for the future.

'Janet Coombe stood on the hill above Plyn, looking down upon the harbour. Although the sun was already high in the heavens, the little town was still wrapped in an early morning mist. It clung to Plyn like a thin pale blanket, lending to the place a faint whisper of unreality as if the whole had been blessed by ghostly fingers. The tide was ebbing, the quiet waters escaped silently from the harbour and became one with the sea, unruffled and undisturbed.No straggling cloud, no hollow wind broke the calm beauty of the still white sky.'

That feels like a perfect Cornish morning to me and the conversation which follows as Thomas proposes to Janet sets the scene firmly. Daphne had clearly listened carefully because it's littered with West Country-isms
"Where you'm been"..."Where are you to?" the latter an expression used to ask where someone is and heard daily around here. The vernacular sits comfortably within the whole and I was completely at ease and convinced as I read.
Nothing jarred and slowly I also sensed something else, perhaps Daphne's search was on for a style of her own and she explores a great many in this book. In many ways it reads like a potted legacy of all that's gone before, not only George Eliot's Adam Bede and all things Bronte-esque for the dialect and there are definite nods towards Wuthering Heights in the plot. As Michele Roberts elaborates in yet another excellent Virago introduction, Daphne takes up the permission of the gothic to go where angels fear to tread as she endeavours to

'reveal some of the bad things that go on in seemingly respectable houses.'

When the action moves to London there are clear elements of Dickens and then the most Flaubertian - Madame Bovary hansom cab drive around Regent's Park, it's all a wonderful literary rattle bag to tempt in a  Daphne devotee like me.
The book itself is based on the real life of Jane Slade of the Slade ship-building family of Polruan which all adds grist to the narrative mill and I have been reading Jane Doe's book on her family alongside The Loving Spirit and to great atmospheric effect. The carved figurehead of Jane Slade which guided the ship bearing her name across the oceans of the world, and features so strongly in Daphne's book as Janet Coombe, now resides proudly on the wall of Ferryside at Bodinnick, where Daphne wrote the book between October 1929 and January 1930, and is clearly visible to all who use the little ferry across the River Fowey there.
The Loving Spirit has most certainly continued to cast the Daphne spell on me, every one I read becoming a favourite until the next one that is.

Port Eliot : Episode Four - Below Stairs

There's something beguiling and compulsive about an opportunity to see a bit of a stately home that is not open to everyone else, which is why Bookhound and I could contain ourselves no longer and dashed into the Basement Haunting right after the evening talk at Port Eliot thinking we'd then saunter back in and have a good look at the archive and chat to everyone, say our thankyous and bid farewell.
Except it didn't work like that.
Once we emerged at the other end we were shown out to the car park.
We'd been below stairs and there was to be no return to the glamour and glitz of life above stairs, it felt quite as it must have done to those who worked in this strange world centuries ago.
The Round Room at Port Eliot with its legendary Robert Lenkiewicz mural was the locaton for the evening event and also a display of facsimiles from the du Maurier archive held at Exeter University. For me the most striking picture that of Daphne seated with her father Gerald, looking for all the world like a glamorous couple, he holding her hand firmly on her knee, Daphne looking uncomfortably away, not meeting his reverential gaze which is firmly fixed on her eyes.Surely we expect this gaze to be the opposite, daughter looking at father, making this a picture that told those thousand words and more about the strange relationship between father and daughter.
More fascinating discussion about the paper trail that underpins Justine's writing of Daphne and some very informative details from Jessica Gardner the curator of the archive, and all as the Lenkiewicz mural radiated its multiplicity of strange and complex metaphors down on us. Occasionally my eye wandered off to yet another Robert mystery and this mural is known to contain many, it is unfathomable but spectacular for its scale and artistic prowess, a mix of portrait, still life, trompe-l'oeil and imagery. In death Robert Lenkiewicz has certainly continued to arouse the interest and achieve the notoriety he constantly courted in his life.
Follow this link and get a flavour of the house and a virtual 360 degree tour of the Round Room for yourself, it's truly astonishing. I'm going to write more about the guide book when I get it back because it's a very entertaining and beautifully presented treasure. The Tinker snaffled mine eagerly, but I do now have the horse's mouth (or should that be the elephant's mouth?) explanation for the symbolism of the pachyderm.
Everyone I've asked has shrugged and said they hadn't a clue so in the end it made sense to ask the one person who'd know and the Earl has obliged. More soon on that.
But off to the basement we went ushered in by designer Michael Howells and we should have guessed when we jokingly said 'we might not be back ' and he replied ' you won't be coming back' that he was right.
Firstly the candelit cellars. Round so presumably beneath the Round Room and some stock in evidence.
'Anything worth drinking in there,' someone asked us as we emerged,
'all of it probably,' quipped Bookhound.
Then along to the Housekeeper's Room, the Gun Room, the Servant's Hall, everything dimly and eerily lit by candles, surprisingly spacious and clearly all as it had been seventy plus years ago. This was another complete world, a parallel community existing beneath the one it served, and with a dining room 100 feet from the kitchen they must all have been as sleek as that whippet Roo St Germans. Glimpsing shadowy rows and rows of servants bells all named by room and you begin to imagine the bustle and activity down here whilst life waited expectantly and demandingly upstairs.
The atmosphere was cold, chilled and yes haunting, we weren't expecting the figure in the rocking chair to come to life and get up to answer the phone either, nor to hear that it was Mrs Danvers on the other end.
A lasting image with which to depart as I finally head into that long-awaited re-read of Rebecca forty years on. It is certain in my mind now that Daphne had a house as grand as Port Eliot in her mind when she wrote Rebecca, so all a fitting end to a magical and unforgettable weekend.

Port Eliot - Episode Three and my first ever link to a dog's blog

I suspect most people fall in love with Port Eliot at first glimpse. Even Napoleon it would seem.

'Napoloen, gazing at Port Eliot land from the sea as he sailed into exile, said it was the most beautiful place in England. Enfin cec beau pays',

so reports Captain Maitland of HMS Bellerophon ( and I cribbed that from the guidebook)

As Catherine St Germans explained, it is a house full of secrets and hidden places and, in the knowledge that Daphne du Maurier and her sister Angela were frequent visitors in the 1930's, it doesn't take too much of a leap in joined-up thinking to speculate on how Daphne's imagination would have been inspired by such a magical place as she delved deep to create the setting of Manderley for Rebecca.
If imagination be partly a composite of images and impressions, then Port Eliot spins a deep and strangely intricate gossamer web of them across your mind.
As we sat in the library on Friday evening and I listened to Justine read the opening pages of Daphne, though I'm now very familiar with the words, in every setting they say something new and different and I think more and more people are realizing that Justine has actually written a very important book. Not only contributing hugely to a Daphne du Maurier renaissance but also adding renewed impetus to the work of Bronte scholars searching for the missing book of Emily Bronte's poems. The loss of the Honresfeld manuscript, its whereabouts shrouded in mystery and intrigue, is now emerging as another important thread from Daphne and there are some literary super-sleuths back on the trail.
Justine's tenacious and diligent research has caused many a professor to sit up and pay attention because by returning to primary sources she has opened up new lines of enquiry. Indeed the powers that be at The Bronte Parsonage Museum may now be lying in a darkened room with cold compresses sprinkled with lavender water on their foreheads, so persistent were Justine's entreaties. Accessing the Symington letters file, forbidden to all who went before and therefore unopened for fifty years, must have been quite a moment.
Then you sit in a house like Port Eliot, where nothing has ever been thrown away, and suddenly you wonder what unknown treasures this house must hold? Now I've seen the basement, heaven alone knows what's in the attics, even King Tut would be impressed.

Daphne had her way with the weather yet again and the afternoon event moved from the garden to The Orangery (what a useful addition an Orangery is) as that very particular brand of West Country rain fell; it doesn't seems like it's raining at all but you will be soaked within minutes. Justine and Catherine engaged in a warm and fascinating conversation about all things Daphne and the audience was entranced yet again. The sun shone briefly for the slap-up Rebecca tea and so we were able to sit in the garden and cope admirably with the generous profusion of cucumber sandwiches, cream scones and chocolate cake.
With an eye for gates these days I espied this one leading into the Orangery and suddenly Catherine's words about a house and garden full of secrets never felt more real.

Everyone chatted to everyone else even if they didn't know each other, which is what you do at Port Eliot, or was that just me? It was a pleasure to meet Oxford Reader and it is also hoped the Port Eliot Daphne du Maurier day will become an annual event so must add this to my list of Essential Pilgrimages.
Justine chatted and signed books with her perfect blend of humour and enthusiasm and just take a look at the Devon designer footwear, note plain NOT flowery.
Meanwhile I dashed home before the evening event to get into passable cocktail and canapes gear (not moving in these circles this was a guess, but read here to discover the Unimagined and serious trouble a canape can get you into, poor Imran) , to find the Gamekeeper had caught a whopping great big sea bass down at Halton Quay and was busy filleting it in the kitchen.
Mess, ugh, fish, ugh, scales and guts everywhere, ugh, out again.
Much as I love the National Trust, of necessity the essence can be diluted whereas there is something quintessential about a house like Port Eliot, a much-loved home left completely alone and untouched. It's a house replete with a soul, unassuming eccentricities and a setting with a voice of its own; sometimes declaring loud, sometimes the merest whisper but a voice that you can almost hear, a voice that laughs too as you wander through, and one that echoes back in time across that sumptuous Repton parkland.
Then I think Port Eliot could also be unique in other ways.
Surely the only stately home in the land that has a dovegrey dog with a blog, don't miss Roo's thoughts on the general public and 'the bloody parrot'. This could catch on, imagine what the Royal corgis would have to say? If anyone gets a whiff of a Royal Corgi Blog please do let us all know.
The hundred opening days for 2008 will be up by June 10th but plan ahead for 2009. The litfest will be on again next July, check with the Estate about opening times for the house, make sure you come via the A38 and the Tamar Bridge and then divert off left to St Germans a few miles later. I can promise you a beautiful and magical introduction to any visit to this most enchanting and mysterious county.

Coming Soon : Episode Four - The Basement

PS If you haven't read Unimagined by Imran Ahmad please don't miss it, it was Ann Widdecombe and dovegreyreader's Best Non-Fiction Read of 2007 and it says so inside the book.

Port Eliot - Episode Two

Being met in the hallway of one of the nation's most unique stately homes by the chatelaine is something of a treat.
Port Eliot is a mix of ancient monastic with remnants of tiled floors dating back to the 3rd century, 9th century foundations, 13th century windows, bit like ours really...windows done in 1996, floor laid in 1998 you know the sort of thing. In the 18th century Sir John Soane and Humphrey Repton arrived and the real fun began.
Why be dependent on the tides and have to arrive at your front door by boat when you can divert the estuary and create a park? Now by park, I mean park as in huge, stunning landscaped vista drawing the eye from tree to tree and on to the horizon as far as it can see.
The paintings are truly jaw-dropping in their importance and every one seemed to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds. I think the one which captured all our imaginations was that of Hester Booth dressed in harlequin who has been termed 'England's first ballerina.' Hester danced privately for both the Kings of England and of France and by various means (ie a daughter by the man behind the South Sea Bubble financial swindle) Hester brought great fortune to the Eliot family and they continued to prosper.
Imagine walking into your sitting room and saying 'That's a Van Dyke over the fireplace', Catherine St Germans can, in fact it's ten little Van Dyke's (and as if that wasn't enough the frame was made by Robert Lenkiewicz) and it is clear she adores everything about this house and so did I. As the 10th Earl says in his introduction to the most honest and informative guide book you will ever read (I was up until 2am reading it)
'Some might say Port Eliot is a tip; others may say it is a classic example of gilded decay.My wife and I love it as it is.'
It's not difficult to see why.
Even as I sat in a chair, leather worn bare, horsehair stuffing peeking out at me, that George Bernard Shaw had sat in,(there's a photo of him sitting in it ) in a real country house library housing some priceless books and even one called The Book of Dove Magic, I could sense the voices whispering from the walls. It was surreal. The atmosphere is wonderfully benign and tangible, it's all nurtured with love and completely cherished, this is a house that just feels as honest as the day is long when you walk inside.
Like our house, nothing has ever been thrown away.
The difference is Port Eliot is vast, 11 staircases, 15 back doors, and 82 chimneys and half an acre of roof which has never knowingly been watertight in its entire history so there's plenty of room to store it all and every day is yielding new discoveries.
We loved the museum standard Louis 14th Boule ormulu-mounted brass inlaid armoire in the Morning Room, far too precious too touch you'd think, but no, we could stroke it and what a joy to see it houses the family's collection of vinyl records.
Everything is lived in and loved and has the patina of a million fingerprints that nothing could ever achieve but time and daily use, and now in the light of my visit, I'm completely reappraising our Wilton rug.
It measures a mere 14ft by 10 ft but it was old when it was given too us and already going threadbare. I love it but for years I have juggled it round to hide the fast-growing loss of pattern and exposure of weave.
No more.
Threadbare is excellent and I'm now quite keen for it to move into the actual hole-in-the-rug phase which for some reason I had been dreading.
This is the Port Eliot look and I've realised, forget new immaculate, this is the look that all the best, most loved homes should emulate.
I haven't even told you about my trip to the loo or Justine's talk on Daphne yet, and you'll have to forgive me because I have to dash back for a slap-up Rebecca style cream tea in the rhododendron gardens, a look at the du Maurier archive exhibition, a better look around the house, a chat with Anne from Bookends in Fowey who will be there and I must gather some more reassuring tips on the Port Eliot look which I think we are some way to achieving though unwittingly.
Tonight can you believe it, we will be drinking Daphnes, a Nigella Lawson cocktail concocted for the evening, plus a trip around the basements and a Michael Howells haunting. Michael is the resident designer of Ballet Rambert and set designer for John Galliano, Christian Dior and Mario Testino...can you even begin to imagine what lies in wait?
If you are anywhere near or even distant, you've still got time to get there and I can guarantee your journey will not be wasted. Ring 01503-230211 to check ticket availability, say dovegreyreader and you will be transformed into a student and pay student rates accordingly.
More soon.

Noye's Fludde and Port Eliot

I'd allowed plenty of time to get to the Friday dovegreyreader event at Port Eliot for 5pm.
From here a mere eighteen miles so even given leisurely-scenic I'd be early. But in true Daphne style, as I was about to set off, the thunder crashed around the brimming pewter skies, the lightning forked and we had a veritable Noye's Fludde as the heavens opened.
If the Kayaker hadn't just set off for four months white water river guiding duties in Canada he could have paddled along the lane with ease (that's actually the Zambezi not Devon).
This is predictable.
The minute he leaves the country in search of snow we have a blizzard, hunting white water and we can expect a flood.
Undaunted I crossed the moat that had appeared around the house to get to my car, set off in my trusty Fiesta chariot and quickly realised I'd soon be needing armbands. Funny how it doesn't look that deep until you are in the middle of it.
The lane was flooded, water slopping up the wheel arches and I'd only driven a hundred yards.
Reversing back to the house I decided to float to the other end of the lane where actually the water was even deeper but I just kept going and ignored the strange whining noises coming from somewhere near the front of the car.
Is that where the engine is?
Does it matter if water gets in?
Call me irresponsible but on principle I refuse to learn about cars, that's what the RAC are for and when they arrive I can get the instruction book out to find out how to open the bonnet.
Things aren't that bad yet but in a minute they could be because I then made a completely irrational and stupid decision based on my eagerness to get to where I was going and turned left. As I headed downhill towards the Tamar in order to cross it and climb the other side of the valley, thus cutting twenty miles off my journey, it quickly became apparent that the Tamar was not waiting for me but seemed to be coming to greet me.
Suddenly I also notice in stark relief the combination of ancient trees that tower over the lane and the lightning. I'm safe in my Ford 'Faraday Cage' I think but not so good if a tree topples.
Do not ask me how I didn't splutter to a halt as the water got deeper and deeper and the underneath of the car's had a real good wash, but eventually seeing sense I turned round and headed uphill again for the main road. By this time the flood descending downhill to meet the ascending Tamar was like nothing I had ever seen before and I'm still only five minutes from home and I've been swimming around in circles for half an hour and now I'm driving against the tide and the wipers are swiping fit to take off and I still can't see a thing.
The dovegreyreader event will be starting without me at this rate, but actually I'm beginning to feel slightly nervous at the sheer quantity of water outside.
Check the brakes, that's what you're supposed to do.
No don't check the brakes, if they don't work I won't be able to go to Port Eliot, I'll find out soon enough. Where's the Land Rover when you need it? The Land Rover's on its way back from delivering the Kayaker to Canada via Heathrow that's where.
I'm going to have to go the long way round and suddenly I'm not sure of the way so I ring the Gamekeeper, who thinks I've arrived, to tell him I'm back at the end of the lane and he swims along to me in his van with a map and then heads on his way to help someone whose house is flooding.
I don't ask about ours.
If it's flooded I won't be able to go to Port Eliot, I'll find out when I get back.
Eventually I summit at the main road and crack on, finally screeching up to the front of this incredible house that is Port Eliot at one minute to five where thankfully the brakes do work and I don't drive on in through the front door.
So what's waiting inside?
Well everyone else for a start, and Justine Picardie attired in dovegrey and clutching a copy of Daphne and Catherine St Germans with a dovegrey dog and all those fabulous Joshua Reynolds paintings, so then we...
Well that's enough excitement for one post, more soon, but special, astonishing, amazing doesn't even begin to describe it all.

The Parasites

All my life I've seen myself as a fan of Daphne du Maurier, based on that seemingly firm foundation of teenage reading, but then I look closely; a read forty years ago of her best known novels and a disgraceful neglect of all the others since.
Things need to sharpen up around here.
The admiration now in need of some substance, reading the whole lot is the only solution and it's proving to be a magnificent endeavour. All helped by the fact that Virago have bought them all back into print of course and ably assisted by that special offer from The Book People which for £9.99 kick-starts any ailing Daphne shelf back into life. Even I couldn't bring myself to write in some of those early and first editions (squashed flies and all) gracing my shelves.
The Parasites written in 1949 comes with an intriguing epigram, 'For Whom the Caps fit' and not difficult to join up the writing and see that the family of children portrayed closely mirror Daphne's own experience of life in a theatrical family.
In particular perhaps Papa.
Delaney, the needy and ego-centric singer and matinee idol with a keen sense of his own requirements to the detriment of all those around him. There's a dancing mother who bears more than a passing resemblance in both life and the loss of same, to Isadora Duncan which deviates from the reality of Daphne's life but it's Julie Myerson in her introduction who confirmed what I thought I was also detecting.
These introductions are best read after the event I find, and it was Julie who identified a central and very Bronte-esque element to The Parasites, specifically a Wuthering Heights element. It was itching away invisibly as I read and suddenly there it was on the surface and ready to be scratched and suddenly a book you've read is exposed in a new light and with whole new layers of meaning.

'...a prime strength of both Bronte and du Maurier is their ability and willingness to imagine and mine the darkest reaches of the human mind, of passion and sexuality (the male and the female side) and of life and death. These are brave writers unafraid to look over the edge into the abyss.'

The big difference also flagged up by Julie is that Wuthering Heights doesn't actually make you laugh out loud, The Parasites most certainly might, not least the scene where Maria Delaney is left alone with her baby for the first time. Nanny has an afternoon off, baby Caroline has not responded to her Gina Ford routine and  wakes screaming hours before she should. The ensuing mayhem, if it wasn't quite so awful, would have you in hysterics and thank goodness good old Woolworths had the answer with a dummy.
A book about the exclusivity of the family, the shared history and, in the case of the Delaneys, rather a patchwork of mixed heritage and pedigree all contributing to a secret world impenetrable to outsiders. Everyone takes a hand in the narrative often individually then merging collectively so the blurring of the family from individuals into one entity is seamless and significant.
If separation is to happen then so be it, but drastic measures will be called for and given the scope of Family Delaney you know that just about anything could happen...and it does.
Such a good read, but another lesser known Daphne perhaps? Thankfully yet another of those brought out of mothballs by Virago and it comes highly recommended here.

Port Eliot preview

With the Port Eliot Daphne du Maurier event coming up next Saturday I can hardly contain the Daphne excitement. The books are flowing and unputdownable right now and I will be immersed in them all over the Bank Holiday.
Thanks to Justine Picardie and Countess St Germans there is to be a very special private dovegreyreader event on the Friday and there are twelve very very excited people out there who can't wait for that.
A talk on Daphne, a preview of the Daphne archive exhibition and hopefully a peek at the house which is firing my imagination from afar and all that needs much assuaging. This will be a fusion of the Endsleigh Salon group (with a few other invited guests) and Port Eliot which all seems very appropriate given the grandeur of the setting. We are very spoilt now especially after the last Endsleigh Salon gathering where we sat out on Georgiana's parterrre terrace as the sun went down over the Tamar Valley, with waiters bringing us trays of tea.
It was all a bit surreal for a book group location...at least they can't accuse me of making them slum it in the corrugated iron village hall.
The Sir Joshua Reynolds paintings at Port Eliot now a gifts in lieu in situ settlement against death duties and I'm particularly looking forward to seeing those. The Ist Lord Eliot was one of his patrons and Sir Joshua was a Plymouth resident whose good friend Angelica Kauffmann was a brilliant artist in her own right, but hardly recognised at the time because she was a woman and yes, where exactly are all the great women artists?
Well Angelica was one. Elizabeth Vigee-Le Brun was another and the Italians had plenty hiding behind closed doors. I feel all that art history stuff rising to the fore again.
Then there is the Robert Lenkiewicz mural in the Round Room.
It's history now that Bookhound and I couldn't raise the £20 to buy three Lenkiewicz originals back in the 1970's. We were newly married I was a student health visitor, Bookhound was an art student in Plymouth and Lienkiewicz used to invite them all to his studio...no it'll never catch on we decided. Follow that link for an amazing Port Eliot- Robert Lenkiewicz anecdote.
As if that wasn't enough Humphrey Repton had a hand in the Port Eliot garden landscaping as he did at Endsleigh so there will be plenty to look at on Saturday too. Even if it's tipping it down with rain have no fear, I will don my wellies and trudge out with my camera for you all.
Countess St Germans has very kindly offered a discount for tickets on Saturday May 31st to any readers of this blog. The Garden Party would be £15 (instead of £20 which also includes admission to the house and slap up cream tea) and the evening event would be £27 (usually £30 including again house tour, basement haunting, and cocktails and canapes).
Just say the magic words dovegreyreader when you book.

The Scapegoat

Unrepentant at repeated single-author blogposts this book responds neatly to my tagging by Kirsty last week for a Friday Forgotten Book post. Picking up the baton within the Friday box (good handover Kirsty!) I race along with my Daphne reading and will continue to write about the books every so often in the next few weeks.
The Scapegoat has been a first time read and I'm still reeling from a book that is uniquely skilled in its subtleties. Here are Daphne's thoughts on it in a letter to Oriel Malet,

'I know that it has been written from a sort of spiritual awareness, which is not emotional...Actually in The Scapegoat, I've tried to say too many things at once. How close hunger is to greed, how difficult to tell the difference, how hard not to be confused, how close one's better nature to one's worst, and finally, how the self must be stripped of everything, and give up everything, before it can understand love. But one can't tell that to the ordinary reader. He that has ears to hear let him hear.'

John, holidaying in France from his rather predictable and bland academic life in London finds himself confronted by his doppelganger Jean de Gue. Duped into replacing his French look-alike in his messy and complex life, John walks into a home he doesn't know filled with a family he has never met before, a glass-making business about which he is ignorant, secrets and allegiances of which he is unaware and only the dog notices the difference.
If fiction is an array of possibilities then The Scapegoat is one of those novels where the possibilities feel limitless. Daphne structures this complex physical and psychological world intricately and flawlessly and I was constantly measuring up all the options at her disposal. John becomes the master of the well-thought out open-ended question as he relies on those around him to supply the background to every single detail of his life as he attempts to negotiate the hazards of an unaccustomed routine.
Constantly he questions his very existence, who he is and what he is,

'...a clown's covering, a ludicrous mask of paint and powder, already melting, falling away in strips, showing me to myself unchanged, the useless nonentity I had always been.'

Suddenly invested with power and control and dealing with a past to which he did not belong but which infiltrates every moment of the present, John realises he can make or break the lives around him in an instant.
Daphne scatters the novel liberally with all her Jungian ideas about the two selves and then creates a fusion of the two to make a third. I can't make any pretence of an informed Jungian analysis but, if that is of particular interest to anyone out there, here's a book that will bear fruitful and insightful material.The dangers and pitfalls of the split personality, allowing one half to dominate to the exclusion of the other and the necessary balance of the two must have been a particular peril to a writer like Daphne who immersed herself so completely in the lives of her characters as she wrote.
Daphne's ability to define sense of place not just confined to Cornwall, here she does France perfectly and several people including her daughter Tessa Montgomery cited this book as a favourite and to my mind perhaps this one a neglected gem in Daphne's oeuvre. The book is brilliantly written and easily stands the test of time as I am finding does most of Daphne's writing. She ploughed such a unique and indefinable furrow that no one has really been able to analyse it or pigeonhole her books into any particular literary age. They seem to stand up to the most rigorous scrutiny no matter which lens you peer through.
Now who to tag for next Friday?
Who to tag?
Ip dip sky blue ....Juxtabook, it's you!

Letters from Menabilly : Portrait of a Friendship

Having turned the final page on Daphne's Letters From Menabilly, edited by Oriel Malet and revisited my letter-writing self, I'm reminded how fascinating letters can be and am now mortified that there seem to be no other volumes of Daphne's letters in print. Such a good letter writer, wrote as I imagine she spoke, creating a well-defined trajectory between the voice on the page and the mind of the reader, Daphne could so easily be sitting in the room.
Lots of incidents, anecdotes and mentions have intrigued me, so many little glimpses of her life as a writer

'Someone has to die soon in my book, and I feel I must have a French missal before she does, so that I can feel myself at the funeral.'

and this sage advice for Oriel struggling with her own book,

'Listen, first of all, don't get all hot and bothered about this thing you insist on calling 'a plot'. You don't have to have a 'plot' ; it sounds like Guy Fawkes in his old cloak, creeping with a lantern. You don't even have to have action (think of Proust). but you must have a real reason for it all, a reason for the things you want to say.'

Buried in these letters are countless kernels of good advice for any would-be writer all shared generously with Oriel Malet.
There's an interesting reference to Frank Baker, a fellow writer and Cornish incomer and writer of Miss Hargreaves, who had sent Daphne a copy of one of his books,

'Well, this man, Mr Frank Baker, wrote me a nice letter and sent me his Birds to read, saying he had read mine in Penguin's and thought it very good. So I began his, rather smiling derisively thinking it would be nonsense, and it's frightfully good! Much more psychological politics than mine and going into great Deep Thoughts, I was quite absorbed!...I do think it's a shame his novel never seemed to sell in '36. Hitchcock would have been well-advised to have bought his, and not mine.'

I also particularly like the way it's possible to compile a morsel of Daphne's reading list.
There is a great deal of monastic reading in this second half of her life, Against All Reason, The Nun's Story, In a Great Tradition, the writing of Thomas Merton and much spiritual searching seems to have been in evidence throughout Daphne's life.
Also getting a mention Rosamund Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen and in an unaccustomed display of wrath,

' The thing that maddened me this week, on TV, was that writer called Margaret Drabble, who went to Haworth and had a programme on the Brontes...she flounced about in one of those long Maxi coats, with flowing blousy hair, even on the moors, and talked about the three unhappy sisters, sex-starved etc and longing to break away. I could have HIT her! Not a word about Gondal...said all Branwell ever did was to drink at the Black Bull and that Charlotte hated the Parsonage. It was a travesty!'

I have emerged from these letters full of even more warmth and admiration for Daphne in all her guises.
It was therefore intriguing to hear Daphne's eldest daughter Lady Tessa Montgomery speak at the Du Maurier Festival and also confirmed for me that the myth which Justine identified is now truly gathering momentum and becoming increasingly potent and powerful.
It was all tangible and much in evidence at this event.
Standing room only and I was entranced as this tall dignified figure, who seems to resemble Daphne quite closely, gave a vivid account of her mother's life and you could have heard a pin drop. In the audience  local acquaintances,offspring of previous maids et al and I found myself sitting next to an elderly man who introduced himself  to me as the Menabilly plumber. Everyone keen to claim a connection and offer their own memories and Tessa herself, when asked, agreed that the Letters From Menabilly were a lovely tribute to her mother and gave good insight into the real Daphne, the person the locals seemed to know and remember.
There is no doubt, and it is no secret, that all Daphne's children had an unusual childhood, and had to share their mother with her writing life. Daphne, although often at home, treated the routine of her writing as a working day and spent it in solitude in her writing hut at Menabilly. Her children knew better than to interrupt her yet without this iron discipline her books would not have happened.
Tessa Montgomery's final words, that she remained immensely proud and always would of her mother's life and her writing, was met with huge and generous applause as if in gratitude for what this whole family have given us.

Daphne comes to Port Eliot

For anyone who still has an insatiable appetite for all things Daphne, which is me in case you haven't guessed, and is within striking distance of the Tamar Bridge, which is also me, but may be you too, here's an event not to be missed under any circumstances.
Daphne at Port Eliot, St Germans on Saturday May 31st.
The combination of place and subject is so magical I hardly know where to begin, but first perhaps check out this fascinating article on Port Eliot by The Countess St Germans to gather a sense of place before you even add Daphne du Maurier into the equation.
Then imagine a garden party amongst the rhododendrons, readings and afternoon tea or the evening event, The Haunting of Daphne, champagne cocktails and canapes and follow in Daphne's footsteps.   
Justine Picardie will be there, Dr Jessica Gardner of the du Maurier archive at Exeter University too, along with an exhibition of pieces from the archive. Talks and discussions throughout the day and Ann Willmore from Bookends of Fowey will also be on hand selling antiquarian and modern books and doubtless sharing her vast knowledge of all things Daphne.
The Port Eliot annual literary festival is legendary locally and now I have to admit I've never been. Friends assure me it's like Glastonbury meets Hay-on-Wye and everyone adores the relaxed atmosphere.
No festival this summer, the house has just opened to the public and that's probably enough to cope with in one year, it's a lived-in home so just imagine the public all filing past as you are eating your breakfast? I'd be in a right old state worrying about people tripping over boy's plate-sized trainers or stepping on something the cat's brought in.

Talking of cats, can you just imagine it?
A state room and throne of his own would no doubt be demanded, but just feast your eyes on this.
Breathtakingly splendid or what, but have no fear dovegreyreader will be there and taking all those of you who can't make it along too.

Truran Books

I've resisted all week but finally I caved.
Bookshops at literary festivals are like an irresistible honeypot of immediate and utmost relevance and I had been eyeing up these two all week. It just needed Bookhound to say helpfully 'would you like those? ' as I gazed at them longingly this morning, which he duly did.
Then it's not really me who's caved, it's him isn't it?
I'm reading The Loving Spirit at the moment, Daphne's first novel and it's proving to be an unputdownable revelation, pure Cornwall, and in the context of Daphne's life when she wrote it revealing an unbridled love and enthusiasm for every aspect of her subject. Having heard Helen Doe speak last week it was patently obvious I needed her book Jane Slade of Polruan if I was to gain the maximum from my read, wasn't it?
Then in my 'need to know everything' way of things, It's Only the Sister, Angela du Maurier's memoir. How could I not?
Both books published by small independent Cornish publisher Truran Books, nice paper, nice binding, you know what I'm like, as to the actual words, well I'll let you know.

David Lodge at the du Maurier Festival

This very morning, my last journey down to the du Maurier festival for the year, this time to hear David Lodge speaking about his latest novel Deaf Sentence. Sadly Brian Sewell's talk this afternoon cancelled due to ill health, so wishing Brian well but of course bemoaning the loss of that wonderful and unlikely combination of  Sewell and blog review...a blg? Wht on erth is a blg? (For those that may not be aware, to my ear Brian Sewell, art critic extraordinaire, has a cut-glass very economical style of speech, usually through very tightly pursed lips with a glossing over of the vowels, it's enchntng)
David Lodge predictably excellent and, even though I'd read Deaf Sentence, his readings from it felt fresh and new in his own voice. Some writers pull this off; I've listened to a fair few who don't. David Lodge reading with a palpable sense of this text is mine, I wrote it therefore I know what I meant by it and so the emphasis and inflection were perfect.
It's also at this point at any literary event, though I know I have switched off my mobile phone, I have a moment of complete self-doubt about it...did I really? Did I imagine myself doing that?
Difficult, as David Lodge said, to discuss a book that many in the audience may not have read yet, and he gently chastised the reviews of it that give away so much after he'd been so careful to conceal the plot within the book. Fear gripped my heart for a minute as I frantically tried to think what I'd written here, but I do remember not mentioning a great deal for fear of spoiling under my unwritten rule of minimal plot details.
There was interesting discussion about the gradual loss of his own hearing and the fact that David Lodge had chosen to highlight the comic aspects of this. I was delighted to hear that he agreed with me (though he was unaware of this) that the second half of his book is indeed elegiac.
Discussion also about past work and I have added Author, Author to my list for its du Maurier relevance and also The Year of Henry James because I keep hearing about it. To be honest might as well add the whole lot, I'm intrigued to explore the binary opposition that David Lodge centres at the heart of all his fiction and with a comic eye that is so flawless and precise.
And for anyone who is left wondering whether I did indeed have the courage to place a book full of scribbles in front of the man who condemns the practice widely in his book...

A Virago 30th Anniversary Celebration at Fowey

The Celebration of the 30th anniversary of Virago Modern Classics event at the du Maurier Festival brought together Virago editor Donna Coonan, Stella Duffy (left) and Linda Grant (right) staged in a very intimate little offshoot tent so we were all close up and friendly.

The space filled with Stella's fabulous laugh constantly, the best when Linda cited her university lecturer in the early 1970's who had flagged up D.H.Lawrence as the only writer who understood women.
Stella was hard pushed not to fall off her chair laughing as were the rest of us.
There was a general offering of 'what Virago meant to me' and the consensus that Virago had appeared as a life-saving defib to the barely pulsating heart of literature written by women available in print back in the 1970's. Now we're tripping over it every way we turn (though still not enough thinks Stella) but 'twas not ever thus. The significance of the timing and context within which Virago launched with Frost in May by Antonia White (interestingly recommended to Carmen Callil by Michael Holroyd) vitally important as the texts became available to support the arguments of the burgeoning feminist cause.
It seems a lot of reading ago now and I'll be honest I was so busy flogging myself to death and up to my neck in starched uniform, sick babies and towelling nappies on the wards in the 1970's, that the early days of Virago slightly passed me by, so thank goodness there were others out there fighting the cause. There was much nostalgic reminiscing of early meaningful Viragos, Good Behaviour by Molly Keane for Linda reminded me that I have been meaning to read that one for ages.
Then readings from favourites.
Despite a residual native New Zealand (since the age of five) twang Stella does a mean Southern lady and read from Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King with much hilarious conviction. I've read bits of this and will now read the rest because it's very funny and Stella did it great justice.
Linda gave possibly the funniest reading I will ever hear of Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M.Delafield, the March 18th Trip to London and subsequent make-over in preference to visiting an art exhibition. I never stop reading this book, it's perfect for every occasion and this one was no exception.
Donna shared an extract from A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark and now I most certainly want to read that one again.
Stella did a great promotional job on me to seek out some of Janet Frame's writing. Mea culpa and there is more coming into print from Virago, she didn't just write biography, her novels are fantastic apparently and I want to read them yesterday.
Helen Taylor popped up again, in the audience this time and paid tribute both to Virago but also to the work of Elaine Showalter and her ground-breaking book A Literature of Their Own. Resounding here heres as we all remembered reading that and emerging with great long lists of women writers we'd never heard of.
Some great books in the pipeline too, Daphne du Maurier's short story collection Breaking Point (considered by many to be her strongest) and Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbon coming soon. Mention also of a book that hasn't done well and Virago can't understand why, Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker.
I wonder how many of you know of this book?
I actually hadn't heard of it but no matter I thought, can't know everything as I dashed to Amazon to find it and...well, it's the cover. I know we've all had interesting discussions here and elsewhere about the changing image of Virago covers, the demise of the bottle-green to market them successfully and competitively alongside popular contemporary fiction and I'm trying hard to overcome all my nostalgic prejudices about that now, but if I'd seen this I honestly don't think I would have bought it. A quick glance and it has pastel chick-lit writ large and I feel oddly excluded from the content before I even pick the book up. Or is that just me?
However I think I can forgive in the very big scheme of things. We owe a huge debt to Virago and the vision of that ground-breaking editorial team who have bequeathed us this lasting legacy.
All in all a great session and look out for that fabulous and free little Virago 30th anniversary booklet in a bookshop near you.

Du Maurier's Cornwall- Helen Doe, Ann Willmore and Helen Taylor

It's Sunday and we're back again after the excitement of Saturday for three events and more unusually hot and relentless May sunshine down in Fowey.
Du Maurier's Cornwall at 10am and again Helen Taylor in the chair. Alongside Helen are Cornish experts Helen Doe and Ann Willmore. Helen Doe is a maritime historian whose book Jane Slade of Polruan charts the life of a family of Cornish shipbuilders and it was from Jane Slade that Daphne took her inspiration for Janet Coombe in The Loving Spirit. The lovely Ann Willmore is the owner of Bookendst that most delightful Fowey bookshop and in her own right a complete expert on all things Daphne. Anyone researching Daphne du Maurier first beats a path to Ann's door where Ann generously shares the fantastic archive of information she has gathered. I learnt more about Daphne in a thirty minute conversation with Ann on my last trip to Fowey than I had known in my entire life and came away fired with enthusiasm to get reading.
Amazingly this was Ann's festival debut so here it is, Ann sitting in a Helen sandwich against a Daphne backdrop, recorded for posterity.

Helen Taylor opened with a reading of the opening paragraphs from three of Daphne's books,Jamaica Inn, The King's General and My Cousin Rachel and also an extract from Vanishing Cornwall about Rocky Valley and St. Nectan's Glen. We used to walk this trail as children on holiday in Tintagel back in the early 1960's (when there was one gift shop) and somehow I was back there as the language merged into the spirit of place as Helen read.
I wonder if having Cornwall embedded in your psyche as a child helps all this?
Then a special moment as we watched brief extracts from Cliff Michelmore's BBC interview with Daphne to celebrate her 70th birthday. Footage of Daphne playing with the children at Menabilly, and the older Daphne commenting on those shots and some wonderful views of her rapidly vanishing Cornwall.

Daphne was a great walker and walkers look and see with meticulous observation, Daphne understood what she saw and could translate that into language and it is all so evident in the fiction.
Ann evoked more sense of place as she described an experiment to look at the last lines of Daphne's novels (don't do this if you haven't read them was the warning)  and shared her local knowledge of locations.Use of the elements, sky,sea, clouds, granite and slate all proliferate as do frequent references to birds. It is a lesser know fact that Daphne's father Gerald was a keen ornithologist and Ann felt sure this had been a strong influence.
Helen Doe used the background picture in the first photo to emphasise the life intended for Daphne by her family (right) in stark contrast to the life she chose (left).We laughed at how horrified her mother must have been to see her daughter in the trophy photograph dressed in the seaboots and the sou'wester with a thirty pound, five foot plus deceased conger eel, which she had just landed, as a backdrop.
Life at Ferryside (Daphnes' first Fowey home) provided a unique proximity to the sea and its smells ; the tidal water, tar, rope, rusting chains and a perfect view of the busy working port of Fowey across the river. These were the dying days of the sailing ships and much of this is reflected in Daphne's books and who can tell how much she dreamt of sailing aboard one? Frenchman's Creek probably says it all.
The discussion was relaxed and highly informative, I could rattle on about it all for hours and as is often the case it stimulated a fine range of audience questions which I've summarized below including the occasional googlie, well fielded.

Q - If Daphne returned to Cornwall what would she make of it now? Eden? Heligan? What would she think?
A - She would have loved Eden and The Lost Gardens of Heligan but would possibly have been worried about the encroaching concrete and the vast numbers of tourists. She cared passionately about the county and frequently supported local initiatives financially to preserve the environment.

Q - How did she feel about the local population? It is known that she didn't like her children to play with local children
A - Helen Doe to the rescue because she comes from a local family and her grandfather, Harry Adams was amongst Daphne's best friends. Daphne was very close to local people but not a socialite and she also tended to compartmentalize her friends, but once a friend always a friend. It is a myth that she was unfriendly and reclusive but all this needs to be considered within the social context of the time where class distinction was a way of life and the upper class background that Daphne had been born into. There was inevitably an element of snobbery, Daphne's husband worked for the Royal Family who were revered and respected, Daphne herself was a distinguished and wealthy writer who though she could have readily accessed the London literary establishment chose not to but still needed to protect herself and her family from intrusion.

Q - Daphne had a great sense of humour, why is it frequently ignored?
A- As the film clips revealed her humour was very self-deprecating with a real sense of irony ' good heavens, just look at me there, everyone said I looked like Marlene Dietrich in that suit...'

Q - Did living in Cornwall free Daphne from the conventions of the feminine?
A - Absolutely unanimous 'yes', on her twenty-first birthday when she could have been expected to hold a glittering coming of age party in London, Daphne, whose family had bought her a rowing boat, took hersef off fishing. She hated society life, in Cornwall she could be herself.

Much well-deserved applause and now we'd better dash off for coffee and a pastry before we head to the Virago 30th Anniversary event.

Justine and Daphne in Fowey

Doesn't Polruan look perfect? Up and out early on a simmeringly hot Devon morning which, just two miles from home, becomes a Cornish morning as I cross the ancient little fifteenth century bridge over the Tamar. There's something innately right about entering Cornwall via Horsebridge. I was parking in Fowey in record time to meet up with Justine Picardie before her event on Daphne and it goes without saying this was all a great pleasure and also to be introduced to Henri Llewellyn Davies, the great grand-daughter of Sylvia, mother of the Lost Boys. Henri is a psychic astrologer and along with Rupert Tower who is a psychotherapist, made up the panel to discuss Justine's book in the very capable chairing hands of Helen Taylor.
Helen Taylor, currently Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Exeter , has herself written a book recently, Scarlett's Women : Gone With the Wind and its Female Fans. 
The list of books I want to read and writers I want to explore gets longer by a mile a day at the moment.
Justine launched proceedings by reading the epigrams and then the opening few paragraphs of her book.and there was immediately a tangible and haunting atmosphere as the words echoed around and we all sensed Daphne's anxieties,

'Menabilly was never silent, there were voices that whispered from its walls.'

Asked by Helen where the book had come from, Justine explained how her lifelong love of Daphne's writing had been fired anew whilst writing the introductions to two books for the Virago series; noticing that Daphne's biography of Branwell had been dedicated to Alex Symington, curiosity won the day and the long shadow of the Brontes entered the melting pot of ideas.
In many ways, Justine explained, Daphne went into the territory first with her biographies of Branwell and her father Gerald, both of which read like novels and there was much debate about blurred boundaries and biographies as a form of fiction, one person's interpretation of another person's life and the truth being not quite what we think.
At this point I was reminded of Alison Light's chapter on Daphne in Forever England where she elaborates on the

'untrustworthiness of biography...its pitfalls and pleasures lie in offering us a romance, as though a life were one story with a united self at its centre, instead of several unfinished subjects, ill-matching and ill-fitting parts...these are not 'selves' like theatrical roles, put on at will at different times in our lives, but closer to the shadowy figures we are divided between in our dreams were we think we are playing only one part and yet there is no one else in the cast...'

and then this,

'Biographers must tread carefully amongst these dreams, since we all make fictions of ourselves in order to live..'

Rupert Tower, Daphne's grandson, recounted some fine childhood memories of life at Menabilly and shed more light on the increasingly complex woman that I now see Daphne to have been. He remarked on the dangerous territory of fact and fiction and had concerns about certain aspects of Justine's book, but Justine responded with two marvellously apposite quotes from Nina Auerbach's book Daphne du Maurier, The Haunted Heiress.
'I was born into a world of fantasy and make-believe, my whole life has been a pretence' was one but I was so involved I didn't take note of the other one. Sorry.
Rupert certainly felt that Daphne never quite played the game in the ordinary way, she had wit and irreverance in spades and a wicked sense of humour, often looking at life in a wayward and tricksterish way. He felt, with an adult understanding now of his childhood experiences, that Daphne was acutely aware of both sides of her personality, displaying great moral courage to cross the boundaries in her writing. The frequency of doubles in many of her books was immediately apparent as we all considered that possibility.
Henri Llewelyn Davies gave a fascinating account of her own family. Henri is now in possession of the archive fondly known as the Family Morgue which Peter (one of the Lost Boys) had started work on before his death. Moving for me was her description of the impact of the First World War on the family, Peter, Daphne's first cousin, so traumatised he didn't speak to other family members for years afterwards.
The burden of the inheritance for the subsequent generations of literary families made for fascinating discussion and the potential for the name to feel slightly defiled by the inevitable intrusion was apparent. Yet it is equally obvious at a festival such as this that it often remains the hand that feeds subsequent generations too, and so the balance is a fine and delicate one that must be approached with respect and sensitivity by all sides. Daphne du Maurier's books are all back in print and selling again in huge quantities, as the Virago editor made clear at another session, and Daphne was increasingly aware as she wrote in a letter to Oriel Malet from Kilmarth in 1972, that she knew she was leaving future generations of her family very well-provided for,

'I've just been listening to the news, and they say we have a 'floating pound'! Doesn't it sound like a floating kidney in some poor patient?...But I was rather shocked and horrified when my accountants told me the other day that if I died my actual copyrights would be worth a tremendous lot.'

The summing up of the session left me with one very startling thought as Justine pointed out that we are witnessing the myth of a literary figure starting to emerge as Daphne's life takes on a semi-fictional quality. We are indeed.
This myth steeped, much like the Brontes, in its own geographical and emotional terrain becomes increasingly potent and powerful and we are likely to see it continue to grow and flourish.
A great and informative session and my lasting impression is that Justine has indeed trodden very carefully and sensitively amongst those dreams. Justine's thoughts on her event here and time for lunch at one of those benches I think.

Happy Birthday to...

You may not remember this but I do.
Last year I had a spectacular failure as I attempted a reread of My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier after a gap of forty years. I recounted it all here and to my complete mortification the entire nation was then informed of my disaster via the Guardian Around the Blogs feature. I was trying hard to celebrate Daphne's centenary and it all went horribly wrong, but have no fear, I'm back in time for her hundred and first birthday today.
The party's a bit quieter and the Cornish pilchard canapes have all gone (thankfully) so it's all much less of a squash, I'm sure Daphne would have preferred it this way.
I think I was as nervous as Philip Ashley about My Cousin Rachel but I'm trying to do something I did with Margaret Atwood a few years ago, read every book by a single author, and it seemed best to just bite the bullet and get on with it. What a difference a year and some background reading makes, different time, new contexts.
Justine Picardie's Daphne, pushed the gates open, Daphne's letters to Oriel Malet have flung them wide and I have been entranced by My Cousin Rachel from page one.
We knoweth not the exact time or the exact place (though we know Daphne had Menabilly in mind as she wrote) but the story doubtless well-known by one and all as the enigmatic Rachel appears on the nameless Cornish estate of her late husband Ambrose. Having wintered in Italy as a bachelor for his poor health Ambrose has met and rapidly married the enigmatic Rachel, the widow of Count Sangalletti. Marriage definitely doesn't suit Ambrose, indeed it's the death of him by all accounts and having  left the estate in the hands of his young charge Philip, it is Philip who now finds himself infatuated with his cousin.
This novel written by Daphne when she was forty-four would seem to be judged the last of her best sellers, as Sally Beauman points out in her excellent introduction to my Virago edition

' Here, for the last time, du Maurier applies the full battery of skills that made her a best-selling author. The result is dazzling....it is a razorblade of a novel : the blade is carefully hidden, but it is there, inside the packaging, and fifty years later, its capacity to draw blood remains unaltered.'

But now I'm reading as if with a new set of eyes.Cousin Rachel was the demon when I read it all those years ago, now I've read a completely different book and with grateful thanks again to Sally Beauman for that introduction.

'What we are reading is certainly a confession - but is it sane or mad truthful or profoundly manipulative?'

Daphne has written the book in such a way as to mirror human instinct. How easy it is to hear a story, pass judgement and feel sure of our ground ? Then how easy it becomes to ignore the little bits of evidence that should be causing that ground to shift?
Never will the words 'we hear what we want to hear' ring more true.
Daphne most certainly recognised the fallibility of the human psyche both in her characters and her readers and lays it all bare with My Cousin Rachel. Philip and Ambrose completely inexperienced in the ways of women and therefore how much can we rely on what they say? They jump to all the conclusions and took this reader with them when she was fourteen, even though Daphne sets up uncertainities and caveats throughout. Sally Beauman calls them 'destabilising devices', older and wiser I now find myself considering this book and a great deal more besides in a whole new light.
And just another du Maurier's Cornwall picture to keep you going. Daphne's first home at Ferryside in Fowey.

Sunday Salon - Du Maurier Festival update

Fowey looking radiantly nay dazzlingly beautiful in that hazy, misty Cornish coastal way yesterday, and very warm. The river sparkled, all the boats were heading for their summer moorings and soon it will be that time of year when those of us who live down here stay in the garden and let everyone else come down and enjoy it.
But not this weekend.
It was so good to meet Justine Picardie, especially taking into account her responsibility for my resurgent bout of Daphneitis and we'll be meeting up at a couple more events in the coming months. News on those soon, but it was fascinating to talk to Justine about Daphne, the vast amount of work the book involved, and also the fact that we are witnessing the myth evolve and shape around a writer's life. All keeping Daphne's memory alive and her books in print.
The question is why, in all these years, have I never really committed to the du Maurier Literary Festival before?
Perhaps it's taken a few years, but it has now most certainly built up into a solid venue to put on the calendar. A fine and broad range of speakers and not just Daphne-related events, plus the bonus of clement weather a blessing which undoubtedly improves the ambience. It doesn't just rain in Fowey, the one year we did go 'just to look around' it was pounding down so heavily we didn't even get out of the car. Just sat and waited and eventually drove home again fully expecting to find dents in the roof.
I'll write a fuller account of Justine's event later in the week because I want to do it justice, it was that good.
Impeccably and very skilfully chaired by Helen Taylor with Justine, Rupert Towers and Henrietta Llewellyn Davies speaking and then discussing so many facets of Justine's book and Daphne's life. Then off to the reading group on My Cousin Rachel which Justine chaired. This took place in the Fowey Hall Hotel which has a fascinating literary connection of its own.
Kenneth Graham was a frequent guest and it is reputedly here that he found his inspiration for The Wind in the Willows. Locally it's fondly known as Toad Hall and I'll take more pictures today. I also hope you all enjoyed the strawberries and Cornish clotted cream that we had yesterday out on the terrace whilst taking in the view. I know that was rather a lot of cream, but this is Cornwall where we are allowed to ignore our arteries and our gall bladders for a day or so.
Meanwhile a few glimpses of Fowey in the sun and today I'm planning to walk off our lunch and get some pictures of Ferryside, Daphne's early home across the River Fowey at Bodinnick and where she wrote The Loving Spirit. We have a packed day and I've already transgressed enough for all of us in the book-buying department. Those Virago Special edition classics are beautiful, I have caved in and bought one, plus a few more Daphne's to fill the gaps and another academic book on her writing Daphne du Maurier Haunted Heiress by Nina Auerbach which looked way too interesting to ignore.

A closer look at the war memorial and I spotted a famous local literary family name

The view from Fowey Hall Hotel quite breathtaking and those trees spectacularly atmospheric and frantic with very noisy crows all ready to bless you with luck as you walk beneath, I'm taking an umbrella today.

PS Top Tip, for those super-bonded price labels, no serious bookaholic should ever be without a can of Lighter Fluid. Not for sniffing or lighting a match nearby, but poured carefully onto the centre of a label we find it soaks through, dissolves the glue and evaporates, leaving no trace. This is doubtless an Elf and Safety NO NO and still doesn't explain why publishers (and my local indie) can't use low-tack labels,but there'll be many a ruined Virago Birthday Classic out there without it.

Justine,Daphne,Deirdre,Dilys,Rebecca and Rachel.

Making connections with textiles and reading as my mind always seems to, I'm thinking it might be the same bit of my brain that engages both, and each time I ponder Daphne and a quilt that would match the books I return to the fabulous work of Dilys Fronks.
Dilys,( who kindly gave permission for me to use this picture,) has adapted the technique of reverse cut and sew applique to create a style of her own based on garden gates.To see one is to want one, to make one looks like a life's work, but wouldn't one of these done with the Rebecca Manderley gates be sheer absolute perfection?
In the past I've used cut and sew applique on smaller scale Baltimore quilt blocks as per Ellie Sienkiewicz (this one the legendary Divine Guidance for which a great deal of the same was needed) and I have got as far as making the background for a Dilys-style wall-hanging. The idea was to base it on The Eden Project, those roof hexagons begging to be replicated in the black lattice work and that's where I got well and truly stuck.
The background is made of a colourwash of small squares and is not as easy as it first seems. Deirdre Amsden recognised as the first quilter to use this technique and I've done simple colourwash before (this one my very first attempt in Liberty Tana Lawn,very simple!) and pre-requisite is a design wall. I have a huge flannelette sheet pinned up which serves as mine and with vast quantities of light-medium and dark fabric squares at the ready it all takes you back to the days of Fuzzy Felt. I start to play and squint and step back and reposition, use my own version (red cellophane sweet wrappers)  of something odd called a Ruby Beholder and seven hours later I find I am still stepping back, squinting and moving squares to create a balanced chiaroscuro of light and shade for my garden of colour.
Bookhound will helpfully appear when summoned.
Never summon a designer in the midst of this process....that looks wrong...but I liked that bit...the perspective doesn't work there...that took me ages...try this here and that there...I'll start again. Whenever I make anything like this I always ask him because, pain me though it may, he is actually always right and perhaps I should just hand that bit of the project over to his capable hands?
If you're going the whole Dilys the gates are then drawn onto a large piece of black fabric ( Bookhound's actually a draughtsman too, he could surely manage that bit while I oversee?) which is laid over the pieced top and meticulously cut away and appliqued onto the background inch by inch slowly revealing the garden beneath.
Perhaps I could be allowed to start a very little one when I get some of these other projects finished?
Currently I have a log-jam of quilting in completer-finisher mode and nothing in that really exciting thinking, planning, fabric-choosing, cutting, sewing stage...though I have thought ahead and gathered a few Daphne-esque fabrics as one must.
That Eating Room red cover on Justine's book just made me you see, but without further ado we must away to Fowey where Justine is waiting. I'm squeezing into her reading group on My Cousin Rachel this afternoon too so there will be lots to report later.

Our du Maurier Lit Fest Itinerary

I hope you are all geared up for a virtual trip to Justine Picardie's Daphne event at Fowey this weekend if you can't be there in person, and even more Daphne du Maurier treats over the next few days. Justine will be talking to Rupert Tower, Daphne's grandson and Henrietta Llewelyn Davies the great grand-daughter of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, Daphne's aunt and mother of the famous Lost Boys.
I make no apology for the Daphne-fest on here, it's quite a luxury to focus my reading on a single author and I am so steeped in Daphne that I've booked yet another day at Fowey to cope with my incorrigibly inquisitive 'need-to-know' (nosey in other words) nature and I'll take you all with me of course.
I've added in an event entitled "du Maurier's Cornwall" which I think we'll all enjoy.
Helen Doe and Ann Willmore (Cornish experts both and Ann of the fabulous Bookends bookshop in Fowey) and Helen Taylor (editor of The Daphne du Maurier Companion which has been at my right hand all week) will discuss Daphne's deep understanding and literary treatment of  Cornwall. The session will also show selections of the film directed by her son, Christian Browning, Vanishing Cornwall. I can't think of anything better after this week's reading.
Well actually I can and I've booked us in for something else too.
Lady Tessa Montgomery.
Daphne's elder daughter, married to Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, recalls much of the family background together with her childhood at Menabilly and her travels with her mother.
To fill in a gap between these two events and just so we won't be bored, I'm really sorry about this but I'm dragging you all along to A Celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the Virago Modern Classic's List.
Now don't groan, I know you'll all hate it but it's far better than being out in the rain (it always rains for this festival)
Virago editor Donna Coonan will be discussing women's classics with writers Linda Grant and Stella Duffy.
Can you possibly bear it all?
As a treat I'll take you all into the Book Tent afterwards and we might catch a glimpse of the special edition anniversary Virago's, then perhaps we'll drive along the coast a bit too. Daphne not the only famous resident of course, and I don't think I'm divulging celebrity secrets if I reveal Dawn French and Lenny's new 40-roomed home in Fowey, Point Neptune at Readymoney Cove (picture courtesy of Brit2 on flickr).
Sadly we haven't been invited for tea because Dawn's very busy making the curtains.

Forever England and more perspectives on Daphne

I always knew a book entitled Forever England, Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars, published by Routledge in 1991, would come in useful, which is obviously why I bought Alison Light's book years ago.
I was probably attracted by the cover as much as the content because Dame Laura Knight is one of my favourite Newlyn artists and this picture, Two Girls on a Cliff, is a very special one. I have a copy of it in a frame hovering around my desk at work. I'm frightened to bang a nail in the wall, be my luck to find an electric cable and the surgery would grind to a darkened halt. But I can still sit and gaze at the cliffs and the sea when I need a reflecting moment and some distance during my day.
Then I read this,

'As someone who once played on bombsites and listened avidly to stories of the Blitz and 'our finest hour', maybe my own sadness has seeped into the writing: a sort of melancholy recognition that those ways of being English, foolish and even vicious as they often were, were a form of identity and community in which I too was brought up, and whose disappearance, however welcome is also bound to hurt...'

Alison Light is no casualty to a wallowing self-indulgent bout of nostalgia, this is her doctoral thesis after all, but when I read these thoughts, written by her in the preface to her book, I knew I could identify 110% with the emotions she was expressing and which have somehow lain undisturbed and unformed within until my recent foray into the life and writing of Daphne du Maurier. The warning and the caveat comes much later in the book and provided me with a good check and balance to any over-indulgence or loss of perspective,

'Personal memory, far from being a consoling and comfortable thing, is a creature which will not do the bidding of the rememberer, and for du Maurier memory can as easily destroy as enhance the present, shatter a fragile peace of mind rather than create safe places in fantasy.'

Taking as her remit the interwar years so often defined in studies as an examination of literature by men, Alison Light suggests we cannot make sense of Englishness without exploring the extent to which ideas of national identity were bound up with notions of femininity and private life. Broad territory is traversed with studies of the writing of Ivy Compton-Burnett, Agatha Christie, Mrs Miniver / Jan Struther and most relevant of all for my reading at the moment a long chapter 'Daphne du Maurier's romance with the past', Daphne's writing life placed in the context of its time.
Firstly the idea that Daphne's writing is so tricky to pin down to one genre as it spans so many, from gothic, to romance, to family saga, mysteries, science-fiction and ghost stories finds me making favourable latter-day comparisons with the writing of Susan Hill, who has something to say on the subject  and I sense may agree with Alison Light's suggestion,

'Rather than seeing du Maurier as a writer who crosses genres, we might see her as one who resists them and their modern cultural connotations, whilst nimbly making the most of the reader's expectations and generic pleasures.'

In other words, I hopefully sense the inference that we as readers are intelligent enough to cope with it all.
There is a fascinating exposition of Daphne's 'lifelong debt to the Brontes and her self-conscious re-shaping of their imaginative terrain and there they are again, and with Alison Light's assistance the debt becomes clear.
Jamaica Inn as a reworking of Wuthering Heights, echoes of Jane Eyre in Rebecca, the fascination with those on the margins of society so evident in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and the themes of 'drunkenness, theft, murder and madness and marital abuse' all surfacing in Jamaica Inn. The greatest debt of course taking the form of The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte and an entire chapter in Vanishing Cornwall devoted to tracing the Branwell family roots in Penzance.
I'm enlightened (no pun intended but it's true) by the suggestion that Daphne was

'the first generation of girls for whom the prescriptions for a suitably feminine reading were relaxed, allowing them to read the works of Alexandre Dumas, R.M.Ballantyne and Captain Marryat, as well as the boy's school stories.'

But beyond all this Alison Light's readable, lucid and carefully thought out progression through Daphne's life and writing has illuminated a pathway for my thoughts as I revisit books I first read as a teenager and many that I have never read at all. Daphne du Maurier's unique position within the twentieth century is well defined and alongside that it dawns on me that I was around for almost the whole second half of that century too, and suddenly I have a new perspective on what went before,

'the generation who grew up just too young to fight and who lived to some extent in the shadow of that prematurely aged group, only eight of nine years older, who had 'seen it all...this generation of women, many of who were the bright young things of the late 1920's...in some ways taking the place of those lost boys who in a strange way like Peter Pan, remained immortal in the mind, because they never lived to grow up...sustaining too that romantic image of boyish adventurism which had gone to its grave in the trenches.'

Daphne's all-important family background and history and her love of Cornwall, that 'land on the border of Englishness, the last outpost of the nineteenth-century', everything that made her tick all presented beneath the arc and glow of this new and different spotlight and all now informing my reading in fresh and exciting ways.
So much that I had never really considered before and now can.

Daphne, The Scapegoat and a squashed fly

'It was like choosing between All This and Heaven Too and The Moon and Sixpence. I chose The Moon and Sixpence and I only hope that it will come off because I did take so enormously to Alec Guiness. We lunched together, and supped together, and I knew he was right for my man in my book, and when he told me had spent five days in a Trappist Monastery before becoming a Catholic six months ago it absolutely tipped the scales.'

It's 1956 and Daphne du Maurier, writing to Oriel Malet, is hoping that Alec Guiness will star in the film of The Scapegoat. She has turned down an offer from MGM who want Cary Grant for the role in favour of a smaller production which will star Alec.
Later Daphne recounts an overnight stay at the home of Alec Guiness and his wife

'...he called me in the morning with my brek, which I didn't expect, and was laying [in] having had two pills because of my cold, and very greasy face and hair in pins, and I just had to brazen it out, and he will be so put off !...Their house was very new...I am sure they adore it, and it was very nice but it made me long for shabby old Mena[billy]'

In amongst my current high-risk-forty-years-on-will-I-still-love-them re-reads of My Cousin Rachel and Jamaica Inn I have slotted in a first read of The Scapegoat and I am enjoying it immensely. I knew I would, my most discerning reading and quilting friend Doctor Ann read it last year and recommended it highly.
Here's what Daphne said to Oriel

'Listen, I really am so tremendously pleased you like The Scapegoat. I hoped you would see the psychological politics, and the religious significance, but I still think this will be seen only by the few, and that most people will read it as a semi-thriller, a chap involved with a crowd of women sort of thing.'

Daphne also tells Oriel this,

' I wrote Victor to beg him not to advertise me as Best- Selling, because nowadays it puts people off, and has almost become something to be ashamed of (though God knows why, inverted snobbery) but I'm sure he won't take any notice.'

Looking at my first edition of The Scapegoat it seems Daphne may have prevailed, though clearly Victor Gollancz liked to big things up on front covers, look at this amazing copy of Jamaica Inn which Bookhound found in the Penn Bookshop for me to add to my little collection of original du Maurier's.

Meanwhile a few more.

I'm an unashamedly new book person but there really is something deeply satisfying about reading a du Maurier in an original edition; scuffed covers, squashed flies preserved on page 57, yellowing pages lovingly thumbed to a smoothness by countless readers, spines already creaking and that indescribable smell of old paper.

Letters from Menabilly : Portrait of a Friendship

My Daphne du Maurier readathon has been long overdue but felt essential before I take us all off to the du Maurier Literary Festival in Fowey next weekend. It seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up,  the chance to reread some favourites and tuck in a few I've missed, but time has ticked on and not a lot to show for it.
The arrival of Letters From Menabilly, Portrait of a Friendship edited by Oriel Malet and published in 1993, added to my new window ledge conglomeration and kick-started the reading as I was quickly steeped in Daphne's life. I have temporarily suspended all other reading to focus my thoughts on Daphne and nought else this coming week.
These are the letters spanning a friendship of some forty years and I was advised by 'them as know' that this book would give me the truest overview of Daphne's later life.
Intriguingly I see that Margaret Forster's biography of Daphne du Maurier, also published in 1993, ( which means I read it fifteen years ago) makes scant reference to Oriel Malet and no reference to these letters.The collection presumably being simultaneously collated by Oriel Malet for this biography of her own and hardly surprising that she didn't want to share this treasure trove of delights with anyone else, because it is Oriel who has shone the light into the darkest recesses of Daphne's life most effectively for me. By using Daphne's own words and then adding her own perceptions, Oriel Malet has unwittingly revealed to me the Daphne du Maurier I felt sure I knew and have often defended from that very first day I read Rebecca and knew I was a grown-up.
Letters can justifiably be criticised on many counts.
Perhaps never written with publication in mind, or perhaps they were?
It could be argued that there may have been great swathes of her life which Daphne failed to reveal in these letters, but that is difficult to believe when you read the frequently unguarded and candid nature of the thoughts and events in her life which Daphne shares with this most trusted of friends. To keep up any pretence consistently for forty years surely nigh on impossible?
Could publication of letters in this way therefore be considered unseemly? The ultimate betrayal?
Somehow I sense not in this unique set of circumstances because this book offers checks and balances to the biographies out there. The Daphne portrayed here in her own words comes across as a caring and forthright correspondent, as human as you and I and acutely aware of her own frailties, beset by an inborn shyness which frequently resembled diffidence and often hid behind mockery, blessed with a gloriously vivid imagination yet a constant sense of inadequacy and low-self esteem prevailed, never very strong or robust but not a scrap of arrogance or self-importance to be found. Humility declares itself at every turn alongside the pressures of life lived with a depressive husband which involved much personal sacrifice. You sense that underneath it all Daphne was indeed a repressed fun-loving person who subjugated it all to continue writing often under the most trying of circumstances, not only because she loved to write but also to keep the home fires burning.

'That's the awful bitter thing, I have provided for all of them, and have no capital myself.'

As Oriel Malet elaborates,

'...Daphne was the chief breadwinner of a family with expensive tastes...her peaceful life at Mena was a necessity for her if she was to continue to lay the golden eggs with which to satisfy her family's demands, and with her generous nature she could deny them nothing.'

It's difficult to begin to imagine the impact on Daphne's writing heart when she chooses to live with husband Tommy for a while in London to support him through his depressive episodes, while her soul yearned for the peace and solitude of Cornwall (this picture is of the North coast) and Menabilly which so enabled and empowered her writing self. Thankfully we don't have to imagine because Daphne tells it like it was to Oriel but never descending into vitriol or nastiness.
Life is one long interruption, The Flat becomes The Rat Trap and the  'clash of mutual guilts' evident as Tommy when not depressed becomes prone to nursing his liver from the comfort of his bed. Daphne often portrayed as a recluse when in fact she guarded her privacy and needed solitude to write and found it hard to surrender this when mid-book, even to go by Royal invite to Balmoral, though she found the Queen Mother great company.
To Oriel Malet Daphne was not only a dear friend but also an encouraging mentor and helpfully constructive critic of Oriel's own writing and over forty years they developed a friendship which is remarkable both for its longevity, its depth and sincerity and the scope of its reach.
Daphne the first to admit she lacked an outward elegance and poise and liked her country clothes above all else, but what radiates from the pages of these letters is that she took on huge responsibility for her family whilst possessing a clear insight into her own failings and more,

'It's the things we don't know about ourselves that are the nuisance.'

My Mother's Wedding Dress, The Life and Afterlife of Clothes

Having read Daphne by Justine Picardie and Before I Say Goodbye her sister Ruth's book, I was intrigued by My Mother's Wedding Dress ,The Life and Afterlife of Clothes, not least for the mention of the search for Charlotte Bronte's garnet ring.
Clothes become the medium through which Justine explores her life and her family and also her own grief over the loss of Ruth and so this book fits in well alongside others I've mentioned recently. Amongst other shared pleasures Ruth and Justine loved clothes and had always shopped together and advised and cajoled each other into buying. You can barely begin to imagine the chasm that opened up for Justine when Ruth died and what a journey it has been to build around that sheer drop that was left in her life as a result.
It ambushes Justine at every turn but woven in alongside are reflections on so much more as I was escorted on a behind-the-scenes look at the world of fashion.
Now I know diddly-squat about the fashion world, but Justine, having been in the thick of it, knows plenty and shares it all with great honesty.The interviews with Karl Lagerfeld and Donatella Versace make for poignant reading as Justine, not in the least over-awed by the encounters, gives a warts and all account of how strangely sad and fickle these lives of glamour, fashion and wealth can be.
Cleverly woven in are literary lives too, Women in White, the Bronte's, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Emily Dickinson and I'm going on a Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald binge any day now.
Why on earth haven't I read Tender is the Night?
Scott and Zelda the archetypal fashionable 'it' couple of the 1920's and how tragically life came tumbling down around them in the 1930's.
Then there are the Best-Dressed Heroines and there she is, Pippi Longstocking, my favourite, first on the list along with Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's and Flora and Elfine from Cold Comfort Farm. Then there's Mrs Ada Harris from Paul Gallico's Flowers for Mrs Harris and I'm reminded that the last time I heard that book mentioned I meant to get it and didn't, but this time I have.
Along the way Justine offers little gems of fashion advice that are even down to earth enough for Devon. There's no point in telling me not to mix Versace with Gucci because they don't sell either in Tavistock to my uncertain knowledge but thankfully Justine's advice is far more practical.
I'd already unwittingly taken the advice on work uniforms and think I may be OK with my budget-loving black trousers (Dorothy Perkins, wide leg £15)  white untucked Zara cotton shirts (bit expensive these at £15 each) with short V necked jumpers in assorted colours (Dorothy Perkins 3 for £20). My favourite and most comfortable red Pikolinos boots are de rigeur too apparently and was I thankful for those visiting a farm high on Dartmoor yesterday.
I had the wrong farm.
They never have signs and, like yesterday, I can guarantee the wrong farm is always miles down a pot-holed track with three huge heavy gates to be opened and closed, rampaging sheepdogs biting at your ankles and it's always pouring with rain. When you get to the wrong farm the only person to tell you so is way across the other side of a farmyard sea of mud and I looked a disaster by the time I arrived at the right farm bearing in mind that by this time I had got in and out of my car twelve times. I'm sure the hand-knitted socks would be coveted too if the London fashion world only knew what it was missing, but I was glad of warm fashionable feet yesterday especially as I felt obliged to take the very muddy boots off as I went into the right farm and could have done with putting my feet up and having a snooze on the sofa.
Clothes, colour and jewellery connect the women in Justine's family down the years and this struck me as an unusual but perfect way to reflect on the lives of those you love, and the Charlotte Bronte connection? Well I couldn't possibly spoil that one.
It's also a book that had me wincing at the value of all the clothes I've long discarded, what might that old Biba shirt be worth now? Did I have a Mary Quant anything at all?
I'm also mortified to think I knitted a poncho and hand knotted every single tassle, we all did.
Justine says NO.
Meanwhile I'm looking forward to taking the blog along and meeting Justine at Fowey next week and it'll have to be that trusty old red Monsoon jacket yet again for me, and probably the red boots to cope with those hills.
If anyone else would like to go Justine has kindly offered four free tickets for her talk on Daphne, Saturday May 10th, 11.45am in the Festival Marquee at The du Maurier Festival, Fowey, just e mail her here and hie thee to gloriously beautiful Cornwall via very muddy Devon.

du Maurier country

It doesn't seem to happen very often, that I read a book and live near enough to the locality to visit in a day, but I'm in clover with Daphne du Maurier and Justine Picardie's book was enough to cause a firing up of the chariot and a trip down to Fowey. It's a bare forty miles from here and we must have chosen the warmest sunniest day of the year to visit. The light in Cornwall is genuinely something very unique and as we approached Fowey it fair dazzled the eyes.
No wonder Dawn French and Lenny Henry have bought a fabulous clifftop house here.
St Ives is the other place to have the same effect and we'll be due our annual pre-holiday season trip down there for lunch soon. I also know there's a book coming out any minute from Oxford University Press citing all those literary places to go in the UK, it will become my vade mecum.
But Fowey was heavenly, though you do have this little sense of foreboding as you leave your car at the top car park, rope up and struggle to stay upright on the steep walk down to the town. You know the ascent is going to be painful but nothing is ever as bad as Clovelly so mustn't grumble.
Here's our first glimpse of the river as we made the descent.

Lovely narrow steep sided Cornish streets

Lunch from the deli and sat in the churchyard to eat it.

The church bathed in sunshine and displaying its stained glass to best effect.

Then without more ado it was into the bookshop Bookends and a lovely meeting with Anne who knows all there is to know about Daphne du Maurier and the local area and made me so welcome. A fantastic selection of du Maurier books, by and about, though the first edition of Rebecca could not be gazed upon as it had just sold. I settled instead for the slightly cheaper Virago edition of The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte. Anne is a bookaholic like the rest of us so if you go to Fowey be sure to pay her a visit in the shop, you will come away enthused and informed and longing to sit down and read any Daphne du Maurier book you can lay your hands on right that minute.
This was all a practice run for my trip down to the du Maurier Festival in May I can't wait. I've booked for Justine's talk on Daphne and then back a week later for David Lodge talking on his latest book  Deaf Sentence. Bookends are sponsoring this event and Anne reminded me what a fascinating and humorous academic and popular writer David Lodge is. I'm already buried in Deaf Sentence and enjoying it immensely.
Nor could I resist slotting in a talk by the inimitable art critic Brian Sewell who would probably have a hissy fit at the very idea of being mentioned on a blog...a what?
I'm going to meet Justine and will take the blog with me so that you can all share in the events and meanwhile it's much more Daphne reading for me.

Sunday Salon - Snow, The Scapegoat and Disquiet.

We woke up this morning to a light smattering of April snow, the Gamekeeper has gone off to the point-to-point to make our fortunes, we all send him with £5 and last year mine came back as £40 and we'd also forgotten it was the Tavistock Book Fair. I hardly need to go buying books but we had a leisurely Sunday morning browse and I did make a purchase.
I don't own a Daphne du Maurier book in the original Gollancz version and so this edition of The Scapegoat, much read, with that smooth old well-thumbed feel to the pages and costing no more than  a new paperback edition, was too tempting to leave behind. I've defined a sad but accurate way of assessing this proprietorial need. I put the book back on the shelf, wandered off and turned to see someone else browsing it. I was overcome with entirely shameful feelings of possession and it was a hard task to watch and wait and then not swoop in undignified fashion when the book was replaced.

Home to a peaceful house and crackling fires and this lot had already grabbed their pitches for the day.

You Know Who was you know where.

I then abandoned other immediate reading plans and settled down to a new novella from Faber, Disquiet by Julia Leigh. Wanting to comment on the use of that tiny etching that books often use as a header or footer for each page, I realise that I don't know what "that tiny etching" is actually called.
But in this book "it" is used to great effect.Usually placed centrally and symmetrically on the page, pleasing and decorative to the eye, here "it" is used to unsettle, or at least it unsettled me and that is completely in keeping with the read. No chapters but occasional pauses bear this "it" to the extreme left of the page, not tucked inwardly and safely in the gutter margin, oh no, this plot could fall right off the page if I wasn't careful.

As I read I was constantly equally on edge as my eye begged this "it" to be in the middle.
Perhaps this says more about me than about the book? After all I was trained to ensure that all the wheels on every bed in the ward faced the same direction before the Bishop came to visit.
But this tiny device successfully and completely denied me access to my centre of gravity as I read, I was teetering on the brink all the time and constantly wondering whether it might move to the centre as the book progressed and let me relax, breath deeply and be happy.
All in all a strange new reading experience, one I've never had before and one that served to enforce the very nature of this book.
Currently my thoughts are in that post-book whirl but much more about this one soon.

Post-Daphne therapy

If you do plan to read Daphne brace and prepare yourselves, plan ahead, because a book like this can only add to anyone's enthusiasm for the subject. I've already checked my du Maurier shelves for completeness and found The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte absent without leave, you might want this one to hand as you turn the final page. Likewise expect an exacerbation of any latent Bronte symptoms, I've had the Haworth and  Parsonage guide books out for a wallow already and dived right into The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Then there's the oft forgotten J.M.Barrie-Llewelyn Davies connection to cope with and that sends me straight to Andrew Birkin's J.M.Barrie and The Lost Boys and then that half-read Hide-and-Seek With Angels by Lisa Chaney, and then, well it goes on and on.
Lurking on my shelves I find a copy of The Daphne du Maurier Companion edited by Helen Taylor. This is well worth a place on anyone's shelf and if, like me, you think you'd like to revisit Daphne du Maurier's novels or are reading them for the first time here's the book to guide and inform.
More Bronte this, Bronte that, plus a book of Bronte poems and then an ancient Penguin picked up in Haworth on our last visit, Haworth Parsonage by Isabel C. Clarke looks interesting.
All enough to keep me busy for now.