Holidays are here!

I'm off to Cornwall tomorrow for a fortnight, so am knee-deep in packing tonight. Should I take wellies? (Yes, obviously). Raincoat? (Ditto). But what about a sundress? (Tempting fate -- the weather forecast is dire). As for the books: well, Gondal-girl has very kindly sent me a book from Australia, which has just arrived and is now top of my list, so it goes something like this:
1. Svengali's Web, by Daniel Pick (thank you Gondal-girl, for proving that the web doesn't kill books, it actually saves them from extinction).
2. Journeyman, by Ewan MacColl (Ewan was my father-in-law; this is his autobiography, which I've decided to re-read, after all these years).
3. The Wouldbegoods, and The Story of the Amulet, by E. Nesbit (both are my original Puffin editions from childhood, so I hope they don't fall apart in my hands).

Yes, I know that's an odd mix, but they're the books asking to be read at the moment. I'm not packing any others, because I want to go and buy some holiday reading from my favourite bookshop, Bookends of Fowey, and catch up with my favourite booksellers, Ann and David Willmore. I'm sure there's also going to be book-buying temptations next Tuesday, when I'm doing an event at Dartington Hall with dovegreyreader. If anything of you are in the West Country, please come! It's at 5pm on July 15th at the Ways With Words festival. And as you might expect, we will be talking about Daphne.

Getting ahead of the plot...

Here's a piece I wrote for the Sunday Telegraph yesterday. It doesn't seem to be online yet, but I thought some of you might be interested:

These are difficult times in publishing – the credit crunch has been squeezing the life out of books, along with everything else – but there are those in the industry who are turning to an alternative form of help, rather than the more traditional comfort of the whisky bottle. Step forward Henrietta Llewelyn Davies, a psychic astrologer with a literary client list, and an Oxford degree in English literature; except stepping forward isn’t her style. Thus is it was that it took me several weeks to track down Llewelyn Davies (or Henri as she is known to her friends); and as it happens, I wasn’t in search of an astrological consultation, but information for my book, ‘Daphne’.

Because Llewelyn Davies comes from an extraordinary family: she is related to Daphne du Maurier (hence my desire to speak to her), who was the first cousin of her grandfather, Jack Llewelyn Davies, one of the legendary five Lost Boys who inspired J.M Barrie to write Peter Pan. Her great-grandmother, Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, was played by Kate Winslet in “Finding Neverland”, and Sylvia’s father, George du Maurier, was the author of “Trilby”, the best-selling novel that introduced the sinister Svengali into popular culture.

Not that Llewelyn Davies takes after her great-great-grandfather’s fictional creation as a menacing practitioner of the black arts; when we first met, several years ago, to discuss my then as yet unwritten novel, she came across as being entirely straightforward, and also generous-spirited, given that I was proposing to turn several members of her family into fictional characters in my book. I didn’t ask her any questions about the future – we stuck entirely to a factual discussion of the past, for the purposes of my research – but in hindsight, I can see that she made an accurate prediction. When I mentioned to her that Bloomsbury would be publishing my book in May 2007, to coincide with the centenary of Daphne du Maurier’s birth, she shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said, and though I very much wanted her to be wrong, she turned out to be right: ‘Daphne’ took me far longer to finish than I had envisaged, and wasn’t published until March this year.

Since then, she has maintained her characteristic discretion about the identity of her clients in the publishing industry, but I must say, when I invited her to the launch of ‘Daphne’, she seemed to know half the people at the party (and the other half were to be discovered huddled in a corner with her, as the evening progressed, seeking impromptu consultations). Most refuse to be publicly identified as clients, but Jeanette Winterson is an openly enthusiastic advocate of her skills. “I met Henri in 1987,” she says, “when she was recommended to me by a friend, because I wanted to learn how to draw up an astrological birth chart for a novel I was planning at the time. Henri said I wouldn’t write the novel, and she was right, but she did teach me about astrology, and a lot else besides. I didn’t want to be taught by a psychic called Doris who’d chat about ectoplasm and call me dearie. I needed someone with a good brain, who talked to me in a language I could respect. And she’s proved to be very accurate.”

She cites several examples: “Not long after we’d met, Henri said to me, ‘you really should give up karate’. I hadn’t even told her I went to karate classes, but I took no notice, and promptly dislocated my shoulder that night. Then there was the time Miramax gave me a lot of money for the film rights to one of my novels, and Henri said, rather disparagingly, ‘it will never be a Miramax film’. Which turned out to be true, unfortunately. Of course, she’s not a hundred per cent accurate – she’s not a mainframe computer – but she’s often uncannily and annoyingly right. Which is why, although she’s utterly unworldly, she has an impressive client list – I know for a fact that she sees a lot of other writers and plenty of publishing executives, as well.”

Llewelyn Davies herself admits to having advised ‘certain writers’ on their careers – even down to the nuts and bolts of plots – but the more I learn about her life, the more it seems to me to be the material for an intriguing book of her own. Her mother – also named Sylvia, after her grandmother – was a single parent; unusual in 1954, when Henrietta was born, but unavoidable, given that her father was Lionel Birch, an acclaimed editor at Picture Post, with a remarkable marital record. “He had seven wives and six children,” she says, “though he never married my mother.” Sylvia supported herself and her daughter with a career in advertising (“she came up with the slogan ‘Cheese Please Louise’”). But at 15, Henri’s London childhood came to an abrupt end when her mother died of breast cancer, and she was sent to boarding school, spending holidays at her grandmother’s house in Cornwall, where she met Daphne du Maurier.

After graduating from Oxford, she went to work for a publishing company, Hamish Hamilton, and having studied astrology as a hobby, started giving her colleagues and friends astrological readings. It was then that ‘the psychic stuff started popping out of my mouth.’ She is matter of fact about it – ‘it’s like seeing around corners’ – but such has been the demand for her advice, she gave up her job in publishing; though some might say that she still works in the industry, albeit in a rather esoteric, freelance role.

I like to think that Daphne du Maurier – whose famously terrifying short story, “Don’t Look Now”, revolves around the role of a psychic – might have appreciated this, had she lived to see her young relative into adulthood. “It was fraudulent, unhealthy,” declares the narrator of that story, after an initial encounter with the psychic, but as readers of “Don’t Look Now” will recall, such scepticism leads not to enlightenment, but a dark and dreadful end.

For appointments with Henri Llewelyn Davies, telephone 0207 371 6473.

Two more literary festivals

Next week I'm off to Ipswich, to talk about 'Daphne' on Wednesday July 9th at 6.30pm (at the St Nicholas Centre; telephone 01473 433100).
Then the following week, I'll be in conversation with Dovegreyreader at the Ways With Words festival at Dartington Hall in Devon (which looks like a beautiful setting, judging from the picture above).
Here's hoping I'll meet some of you at one or the other or both of these festivals.

I'm back...

Where have I been? Well, I could make excuses -- too much work, too little time -- both of which are true, but the real reason is I've been feeling unexpectedly bleak. I was going to say depressed, but that's not quite the right word for it. The sun was shining, the skies were blue, but I felt a kind of greyness around and about me.
I think it's something to do with the emptying of the nest (as alluded to in my previous post), and a sense of getting older (I've just turned 47, therefore closer to 60 than 30), and also a kind of inevitable post-natal depression after finishing a book in which I'd been so deeply immersed. So the blues were bound to happen.
Anyway, I'm surfacing, and suddenly realising how lovely the summer is, again. I've also been writing a piece about J.M Barrie -- prompted by the forthcoming publication of Piers Dudgeon's book, 'Captivated' (and a very dark story it is, too). Of which more soon...

Birthday books

Oh dear, I've been so slow this week in keeping the blog up to date, but the real world overtook the virtual one (sickness in the family, etc etc).
Anyway, it was my birthday on Friday, and my older son has just finished his A-levels and left school, so rites of passage and empty nests are looming. Meanwhile, in between eating homemade carrot cake, I've been re-reading "Cannonball Simp", by John Burningham, which I've had for over four decades, since it was given to me as a birthday present when I was about four years old. It's one of my favourite ever books -- about a little black dog who is abandoned by its owner at a rubbish dump, and then finds a home with a clown at the circus. I knew it off by heart as a child, and then read it to my sons when they were little, and it has survived endless moves of house, not to mention countless sticky fingers. Needless to say, I now have a dog of my own, who isn't black, but nevertheless bears more than a passing resemblance to Simp, being a somewhat barrel-shaped mutt (mainly Jack Russell, but with ears like a Corgi). She's ten, and therefore past her youthful self (like me, though actually, in dog years, she's overtaken me), and is snoozing in the sunshine outside. In fact, she looks so peacefully comfortable, I think I might go and join her for a little while...

Burgh House and Althorp

Tomorrow is Friday 13th, which I hope isn't a bad augur for an event I'm doing at Burgh House, a beautiful Queen Anne house which is the home of the Hampstead Museum, and just around the corner from Cannon Hall, where Daphne du Maurier grew up. It also happens to be the place where my wedding celebrations took place, many years ago, so I feel very sentimentally attached to it. Anyway, I won't be telling wedding stories tomorrow, but I will be talking about 'Daphne', at what sounds like a very civilised literary lunch (please do come along if you can get to Hampstead by 1pm).
Then on Saturday I'm going to Northamptonshire, to speak at the Althorp Literary Festival.
Two unusually beautiful houses in the space of two days... I feel very privileged. In fact, the various talks and events that I've done in the last three months, since the publication of 'Daphne', have taken me all over the country, to a series of lovely places (Calcot Manor, the British Library, the Bronte Parsonage, Christ Church and St Anne's in Oxford, Ferryside, Port Eliot, amongst others). But it's not just been the settings that have made these events special -- I've had the chance to meet a great many interesting people, many of whom have shared my passion for du Maurier and the Brontes. They've told me new stories, and given me fresh impetus, and renewed enthusiasm. And what more could a writer ask for than that?
So thank you to everyone who has come to an event, and also to all of you who have posted on this blog -- I've been able to meet some of you already, but it's been equally good to get to know those of you who can talk in this arena, but live too far away to come to a literary festival. (Some as far away as Australia, Canada, and the United States). A blog may not be quite as grand a setting for a conversation as an English stately home, but it has its own charm, don't you think?

Patrick Bronte

The Reverend Patrick Bronte -- who died on June 7th, 1861 -- is the subject of a new biography by Dudley Green. I just reviewed the book for the Times (it appeared yesterday, on the anniversary of his death), and here it is again, for anyone who might be interested:

What made Patrick Bronte the father of genius? It’s a question that has perplexed the biographers of his more famous daughters, from Mrs Gaskell onwards, but never fully answered. Dudley Green, a former chairman of the Bronte Society, is the most recent in a long line of biographers, though unusual in that his attention is fully focused on Patrick Bronte, the first to do so in over 40 years.
Green’s aim is explicit: to rehabilitate a man misunderstood and maligned by the Bronte myth since Mrs Gaskell published her ‘Life of Charlotte Bronte’ in 1857. But unlike Gaskell’s portrayal of Patrick as “a remote father given to eccentric behaviour and strange fits of passion”, Green believes him to have been a kindly and loving parent with “a keen interest in his children’s development and an able and faithful clergyman, who was ever sensitive to the pastoral needs of his parishioners.”
If this sounds worthy, verging on the dull, then the Patrick Bronte who emerges from the pages of Green’s biography is far more compelling. Born into a poor Irish farming family in County Down on 17th March 1777 (St Patrick’s Day), he was the eldest of ten children, and exceptionally intelligent, becoming a schoolteacher at 16, and then, with the support of his local vicar, entering St John’s College, Cambridge at the age of 25. He studied hard, winning academic prizes on his path to ordination, but also found time to serve under the future Lord Palmerston in the volunteer militia, during a period marked by fears of French invasion.
By the time of his marriage in December 1812 to Maria Branwell, Patrick was a Yorkshire curate, and already a published poet. Six children were born in rapid succession: Maria in 1814, Elizabeth in 1815, Charlotte in 1816, Branwell in 1817, Emily in 1818, and Anne in 1820. In April that year, the Bronte family moved to Haworth, where Patrick was appointed curate; his wife fell ill soon afterwards, and died of cancer in 1821.
According to Mrs Gaskell, the children’s life after their mother’s death was bleak, with some of the most vivid scenes of her book suggesting an upbringing as harsh as ‘Wuthering Heights’: “Mr Bronte wanted to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the pleasures of eating and dress… he went at his object with unsparing earnestness of purpose. Mrs Bronte’s nurse told me that one day when the children had been out on the moors, and rain had come on, she thought their feet would be wet, and accordingly she rummaged out some coloured boots which had been given them by a friend… These little pairs she ranged round the kitchen fire to warm; but, when the children came back, the boots were nowhere to be found; only a very strong odour of burnt leather was perceived. Mr Bronte had come in and seen them; they were too gay and luxurious for his children, and would foster a love of dress; so he had put them into the fire. He spared nothing that offended his antique sympathy.” Gaskell also has Patrick cutting up his wife’s silk dress, setting the hearthrug on fire and sawing up chairs in irrational fits of rage, reminiscent of Heathcliff.
Dudley Green is not the first to show this to be based on the gossip of a disgruntled servant dismissed from the Parsonage, but his rebuttal is scrupulously detailed, using the evidence of the children themselves. Whereas Mrs Gaskell told the tale that the Bronte children “had nothing but potatoes for their dinner”, Green quotes Emily and Anne’s diary on 24 November 1834: “We are going to have for Dinner Boiled Beef Turnips, potato’s and applepudding.”
None of which explains the origins of genius, but the details of Green’s biography are intriguing, nevertheless. We learn of Patrick Bronte’s encouragement of his children’s writing (he provided a wide variety of books for them to read – including volumes by Milton and Scott – along with newspapers that stimulated their avid interest in politics). Green also cites Charlotte’s school friend, Ellen Nussey, who first visited the Parsonage in 1833: “Mr Bronte at times would relate strange stories, which had been told to him by some of the oldest inhabitants of the parish, of the extraordinary lives and doings of people who had resided in far-off, out-of-the-way places… stories which made one shiver and shrink from hearing; but they were full of grim humour and interest to Mr Bronte and his children.” And while his own writing – including several published books of poetry and stories – is not of great literary merit, he nevertheless provided a clear example to his children of the pleasures and possibilities of authorship.
One might cast Patrick as a tragic figure – he survived long after his wife and his six children, all of whom died too young – yet Green’s portrait is of a stoic character, who never lost faith, serving his congregation in Haworth for forty years, successfully campaigning for their right to schooling and clean water. He died on June 7th 1861, at the age of 84, mourned by hundreds of local villagers, who knew him as far more than the father of Charlotte Bronte.
Dudley Green sees it as a measure of Patrick Bronte’s tolerance and forbearance that he had supported Gaskell in the writing of her biography, and defended her from critics afterwards, despite the inaccuracies in her account of him. Or perhaps this reveals Bronte’s own understanding of the complications of what it might mean to be a writer searching for the truth. According to Mrs Gaskell, he had encouraged Charlotte during her writing of ‘Villette’ to let the hero and heroine ‘marry and live happily ever after.’ But his own life has something of the singularity of his daughters’ fictional characters, evading conventional narratives or happy-ever-afters, expressing rage as well as piety, and seeming all the more vividly true as a result.