Wellies at Port Eliot

As you might have guessed there was sunshine and showers at Port Eliot this weekend -- and the rain on Saturday was sufficiently torrential to demand wellie-wearing in the afternoon. Thanks to dovegreyreader for the photo of the 'Daphne' event in the Orangery -- there I am in my wellies with Ann Willmore from Bookends of Fowey. Ann and David packed up shop for the day and came to Port Eliot to sell copies of 'Daphne', along with other books by and about du Maurier -- which was incredibly kind of them.
Fortunately, the clouds cleared just in time for tea, so we were able to leave the (by now gently steaming, though very elegant) Orangery to eat delicious scones and cakes and sandwiches in the walled garden.
Now, I've got to unpack my bags, and cook some food for my husband and sons (abandoned in London this weekend while I was in Cornwall), and hug the dog, and load the dishwasher, and empty the washing machine, and tackle the hillock of dirty clothes that eerily sprang up in the house in my absence.
Oh, to be back in Port Eliot, amidst the Reynolds paintings and the vases of scented roses, and tea and toast by the fire. I have felt the magic, and I'm longing to escape there again...

Mackintoshs and satin gowns, on the eve of Port Eliot...

I'm leaving very early tomorrow morning for Port Eliot, and will report back on Sunday. Right now, I'm in a state of confusion about what to pack, because I'll be doing three different events, and who knows whether it will rain or not? My favourite rose-print frock, which I had wanted to wear for the garden party, appears to have developed a mysterious rip in it; but even if I manage some invisible mending this evening, will a tea-dress go with wellies, if need be?
And obviously, I must take a mackintosh, in honour of both the first and second Mrs de Winter...
I'm sure you all know these scenes from 'Rebecca', but here they are again: the second Mrs de Winter arrives at Manderley as a nervous young bride, knowing herself to be badly dressed 'in a tan-coloured stockinette frock, a small fur known as a stone-marten round my neck, and over all a shapeless mackintosh, far too big for me and dragging to my ankles.' But it is Rebecca's mackintosh that she wears on her first walk to the sea -- to the place where Rebecca died -- and Rebecca's lace-trimmed handkerchief that she finds in the coat pocket. 'She who had worn the coat then was tall, slim, broader than me about the shoulders, for I had found it big and overlong, and the sleeves had come below my wrist. Some of the buttons were missing. She had not bothered then to do it up. She had thrown it over her shoulders like a cape, or worn it loose, hanging open, her hands deep in the pockets.'
Rebecca's lipstick is still on the handkerchief, as is her scent, 'like the crushed white petals of the azaleas' in the Manderley gardens. 'I don't think much of people who just judge one by one's clothes,' says the nameless second Mrs de Winter soon afterwards; but clothes take a central part in the ensuing drama, as the means by which Rebecca's presence is felt. Just remember the episode in which the new wife finds her way to Rebecca's bedroom, still kept as if in readiness for the dead woman's return, satin dressing gown on a chair and slippers beneath, and a silver evening gown and train of white satin, slithering out of the wardrobe, almost as if they were alive...

On this day, in another May...

I can never walk along Church Row in Hampstead -- which is just around the corner from where I was born -- without thinking of the Llewelyn Davies brothers, who are buried alongside their du Maurier relatives in the graveyard. It's a beautiful place, whether in May sunshine or showers, but melancholy, also, and today I found myself thinking of Michael Llewelyn Davies in particular, who was born on June 16th 1900, and died on May 19th 1921. A contemporary account of his death appeared (see above) in the Oxford Chronicle, eight days later, on May 27th.
Michael drowned in Sandford Pool, in the arms of another Oxford undergraduate, Rupert Buxton. There has always been speculation that it was suicide, though the circumstances of their deaths remains uncertain. One of the witnesses told the coroner's court: "Their heads were close together; they were sort of standing in the water and not struggling..."
When I was researching 'Daphne', I found myself returning over and over again to the story of her cousin Michael -- one of the five 'Lost Boys' adopted by J.M Barrie, the celebrated inspirations for 'Peter Pan' -- without ever being able to come to a definite conclusion. Perhaps that is one of the reasons his life remains so compelling, because its outline eludes us. He remains a lost boy; forever young, forever mysterious, forever just out of reach.

Port Eliot

I've just been out in the garden, enjoying the last of this weekend's sunshine, and I wish I knew a prayer to the god of good weather, so that there might be blue skies for next Saturday, when I am doing an event at Port Eliot. They've got some lovely things planned there -- a tea party in a secret garden, and delicious champagne cocktails, and what might be an unusually haunting evening. (More details are here.)
Port Eliot is the most magical place -- it actually looks more like Manderley than Menabilly -- and there are du Maurier associations. (Last Saturday's Western Morning News gives an account of these; annoyingly, I can't post a direct link to the page, but once you open the main site, just put Justine Picardie into its search bit, and the story should come up.)
Anyway, I'll be there on May 31st, talking about Daphne and 'Daphne', and hopefully I'll get to meet some of you, as well. I know Dovegreyreader is coming, so we'll be eating some cake together, in between talking about all things du Maurier. The rhododendrons will be in full flower, and the candles will be softly burning in the library, and you never know, as twilight turns to darkness in Port Eliot, you might just hear the swish of a skirt rounding the corner ahead of you, and a soft, low laugh.
Or to quote Mrs Danvers, as she follows the second Mrs de Winter into Rebecca's bedroom at Manderley, "I feel her everywhere... You do too, don't you?... It's almost as though I catch the sound of her dress sweeping the stairs as she comes down to dinner... Do you think she can see us, talking to one another now?... Do you think the dead come back to watch the living?"

Hurrah for libraries and librarians

I couldn't have written 'Daphne' without the advice and support of several librarians, and access to library archives -- Dr Jessica Gardner at Exeter University was incredibly helpful, as were Chris Sheppard and John Smuthwaite at Leeds University -- and anyone who has read the book will know that several episodes take place in libraries or reading rooms, and that the narrator's parents were librarians in the Reading Room of the British Museum (where du Maurier herself spent time researching her biography of Branwell Bronte). It's never made explicit in my novel, but I always had an idea that the narrator's father, as a young man, might have been the librarian who appears, very briefly, in the scene where Daphne is struggling against the onset of paranoid delusions, having met her husband's lover in the forecourt of the British Museum (a meeting which actually happened, at du Maurier's suggestion, after Tommy's breakdown, with the woman she named the Snow Queen).
As you might have guessed, I loved libraries as a child (still do), because they seemed to me to be places of escape and also sanctuary. I had quite a stormy childhood -- my father suffered from manic depression (poor man, he really suffered, as did we, alongside him) -- and we moved to new schools more often than I found easy. But I always found refuge in a library, though their contents seemed also to offer secret doors to unseen places.
I don't usually post reviews on the blog, but the publisher for the American edition of 'Daphne' has just emailed me this one from the Library Journal, and I'm so pleased about it -- for obvious reasons -- that I'm pasting it here. Forgive me, but this is the Library Journal, after all, so it feels relevant... I'm expecting the novel to sink without trace in America -- it's a big country, and I'm a little unknown writer, amidst thousands of others -- but at least it's got this far.

Picardie, Justine. Daphne. Bloomsbury, dist. by Macmillan. Aug. 2008. c.416p. ISBN 978-1-59691-341-7. $24.95. F
Picardie's well-researched novel about Daphne du Maurier is sure to send readers scurrying back to all those books they should have read in college. Du Maurier's works are referenced, as is her fascination with the Brontë family. Toss in Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie and various members of the rare book and manuscript community, and you have an intriguing fictionalization of many intertwining literary lives. The novel is written from the perspectives of du Maurier, manuscript curator J.A. Symington, and a nameless researcher, with each of their stories spiraling upon the other to create a century-spanning novel hidden in lucky coincidences and missing papers (including those of the Brontës). The result is an absolute gem of a novel that will be a hit with fans of du Maurier, the Brontës, and British fiction generally as well as the avid bibliophile. It should serve as an excellent book club selection that may prompt an interest in these literary figures. Highly recommended.—Leann Restaino, Girard, OH

What lies between the lines...

Forgive me for my slowness this week -- I've got behind with the blog, as well as everything else. But reading your comments tonight have inspired me to catch up, and report back from Oxford, where I went on Thursday evening, to do a talk at St Anne's College. I was invited there by Kathryn Sutherland, the Professor of English, who reviewed 'Daphne' for the Times Literary Supplement, and she asked me a number of interesting questions about the book, as did the (terrifyingly intelligent) audience of undergraduates, postgraduates and Oxford academics.
The conversation ranged from the significance of ink blots and crossing-outs -- in Symington's letters and the Bronte manuscripts -- to the blurring of biography and fiction, which has also been discussed by several of you in the comments to my last post. Juxtabook, for example, has just asked 'why people have been more hot under the collar about [Daphne] than [Julian Barnes'] Arthur and George?' -- and it's a very good question, though I'm not sure of the answer. Certainly, what I've done in 'Daphne' has several precedents, which I mentioned on Thursday evening -- Colm Toibin's novel about Henry James, 'The Master', for example, as well as 'Arthur and George'. If I was feeling in a scratchily feminist mood, I might have answered Juxtabook's question by speculating that Julian Barnes and Colm Toibin are male novelists, writing about male authors, and that the hotness under the collars might have something to do with me being a woman, writing about Daphne du Maurier, who has often been (quite wrongly) dismissed as an insignificant writer of female romantic fiction.
But... I'm not sure if that would get me very far. And to be honest, the encouraging responses from readers who like my book -- and clearly understand what I'm trying to do -- are more than enough for me to not really mind about the people who don't approve. Sorry -- double negative -- but what I mean to say is that the positives outweigh the negatives. (It's unseemly to boast about good reviews, but suffice to say, they are very heartening. Kathryn Sutherland, for example, wrote in the TLS: "Discovering du Maurier where she set herself, at the insecure and fertile boundary between reality and fantasy, Justine Picardie has produced from these years and events her own remarkable mixture of biography, fiction and critical speculation. 'Daphne' is a literary mystery which borrows from and sheds light on the attested manipulation and dishonest treatment of the Bronte manuscripts by their curators and editors, Wise and Symington. It is also a study of loneliness, obsession and delusion that stretches from Haworth Parsonage in the 1830s to Hampstead in the present day, by way of the private madness and professional dealings of du Maurier and Symington in the late 1950s... ")
Of course, books elicit different responses from different readers, and I can't imagine writing a novel that would please everyone. Especially given the subject of 'Daphne' -- for it is, amongst other things, an exploration of the intensely powerful experience of reading, and also of misreadings; of how we can be haunted by fictional characters; and why a writer's version of 'the truth' isn't always the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
I've just read Maylin's review of my book, and she summed it up far more succinctly than I've just done, with her comment that, "at its core the novel is really about the relationships and inevitable influences - obsessive, spooky, unconscious and yet necessary - between readers, writers and the written word."
I couldn't have put it better myself. Which just goes to prove the final point that I tried to make at Oxford: that as a writer, I hope that my book might be a beginning for someone else, rather than an ending in itself.

A day with the du Mauriers

Ever since my book has been published, various people have asked, 'What do the family think about it?' And of course, I know immediately that they don't mean my family, but the du Mauriers. The answer isn't a straightforward one -- because families aren't necessarily single entities, with one point of view; and views have a habit of changing, anyway.
But my day at the du Maurier festival on Saturday gave some indication of their varying responses. First off was the event chaired by Professor Helen Taylor, in which I discussed the book with Rupert Tower, Daphne's grandson, and Henrietta Llewelyn Davies, who is from another branch of the family -- though closely related to a character in my novel, Daphne's cousin, Peter Llewelyn Davies. Henri said she thought that my portrayal of her family was 'sensitive and sympathetic', having acknowledged that she had been unhappy about previous depictions (on film, television, and in earlier books).
Rupert was less convinced, though I think this had more to do with his feeling that the ending of my book was too unresolved for him. I pointed out that Daphne's endings are famously ambiguous -- just think of "My Cousin Rachel" -- and we also talked about the fact that she had blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction in her writing long before I came along, for example in her first novel, "The Loving Spirit", and in her controversial biography of her father, "Gerald", which reads like fiction, and where she refers to herself in the third person, as if she is a character in someone else's story. I happen to think it's a brilliant, intriguing book, but many of her father's friends and family were outraged when it was published, because they felt her portrayal of Gerald was a betrayal, in its revelations of his affairs and drinking and bouts of black depression.
But the important thing, I think, is that there are any number of interpretations that have already appeared -- and will continue to emerge -- about Daphne's life. Like the Brontes, or Sylvia Plath, or Virginia Woolf, her life is taking on the mythic, semi-fictional qualities that made her writing so potent, and will bring her new readers, in subsequent generations.
And that's what I talked about with other members of her family, who are more sympathetic to my novel. On Saturday evening, her son, Kits Browning, had a group of us to dinner at Ferryside, the house first bought by Gerald in the 1920s, where Daphne discovered her abiding love of Cornwall. And I don't want to betray any confidences, but suffice to say, the conversations I had over the dinner table -- a handsome wooden table that happened to have belonged to George duMaurier, Daphne's grandfather and the author of 'Trilby' -- reassured me that I hadn't committed some terrible sacriligeous act in turning my literary heroine into the heroine of my novel.
As for what Daphne herself would have thought about it: well, Henri told a story about going to see a medium, and hoping for a message from her dead mother or grandmother, but instead being given messages about Jamaica, and a whistled tune of "The Road to Manderley". Make of that what you will...
Kits himself said he would love to be able to ask his parents and grandparents some questions about their lives. "Can you imagine what they would make of us?" he said. "Would they even understand what we were saying?"
George du Maurier felt exactly the same way about his own past, and wrote longingly of what he called "dreaming true" -- the ability to go back into the past, and bring one's memories to life again. Which is, perhaps, what all writers try to do -- for in Margaret Atwood's marvelous phrase, we are "negotiating with the dead".