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The Rebecca Notebook and other memories /Daphne du Maurier

The Rebecca Notebook is an account of how Daphne du Maurier wrote her most famous novel and a series of reflections on her life late in her life. Rebecca, like most of her novels, has a pleasing structure as the story unfurls. Few can tell a story as well as Daphne du Maurier which accounts for her enduring popularity some 80 years after her first novel The Loving Spirit. She in fact kept her a notebook as she built the story of the second wife of Maxim de Winter who adopts so painfully to marriage to Manderley where the shadow of the first wife Rebecca falls over her and the mystery of how Rebecca dies unfurls. Although Daphne du Maurier is forever associated with Cornwall, where most of her novels are setand where she lived, she wrote this in Alexandria where her husband Tommy “Boy’ Browning was posted during the War.

Manderley is in fact Menabilly and in a fascinating short memoir she recalls her first visit as a trespasser to Menabilly and her incredible achievement during the latter part of World War 2 when manpower was scarce to restore plumbing, electricity, removal of dry rot and overall refurbishment of a house and land that had fallen into considerable disrepair. This was the deal for a lease on Menabilly and in another  chapter she reflects on giving up the house for Kilmarth,a dower house and inspiration for House on the Strand. There was more acrimony than she reveals between her and the Rashleighs who owned the property since the time of Elizabeth 1.

daphneWritten in the 1970s it’s interesting to see how Daphne reflects on the past from that point of time. In a short appreciation of her father Gerald du Maurier, the leading actor manager of his day, she scorns the modern actor. There is reference to her father’s car parked outside one of the actresses in his latest play all afternoon and he had a reputation for ‘hitting on’ the cast after a good lunch at the Garrick.  However good his acting, nowadays he would be in deep trouble … not least from his family. There is a deeply moving account of her widowhood after the passing of her husband. Her view of marriage is that whatever happens you stick with your betrothed. In her case Tommy was an alcoholic depressive despite an successful career as the youngest major in the army and then comptroller of the Royal Household’s finances. Daphne was not sexually faithful, she had an affaire with the man who put her and her family up during the war. In her appearance on Desert Island Discs she selected a piece of classical music her married lover would play on the piano. The wife of her American publisher Ellen Doubeday was troubled by Daphne’s sexual obsession towards her and she was clearly bisexual. To all of this she does not refer and would be disproving of anyone – not least  herself – who did.

One of the fascinations of Daphne is that her life is as absorbing as her writings. I am privileged to have a small collection of her letters, some postcards and family pictures and inscribed books. This books revealing in its own way has added to my corpus of knowledge of a writer whose reputation endures some 110 years after her birth.

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About Melanie Gay

A former literary agent with three published novels of her own, Melanie retains her life-long love of the written word and recently mastered the Kindle. She is currently writing a historical novel set in 17th Century Britain and Holland. More Posts