Come Wind, Come Weather

by Daphne du Maurier

Short book with true stories of England during the early days of World War II.

Genres: Nonfiction, Short Stories

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Daphne du Maurier was born on 13 May 1907 at 24 Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, London, the middle of three daughters of prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel, née Beaumont. In many ways her life resembles a fairy tale. Born into a family with a rich artistic and historical background, her paternal grandfather was author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the 1894 novel Trilby, and her mother was a maternal niece of journalist, author, and lecturer Comyns Beaumont. She and her sisters were indulged as a children and grew up enjoying enormous freedom from financial and parental restraint. Her elder sister, Angela du Maurier, also became a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne was a painter.

She spent her youth sailing boats, travelling on the Continent with friends, and writing stories. Her family connections helped her establish her literary career, and she published some of her early work in Beaumont's Bystander magazine. A prestigious publishing house accepted her first novel when she was in her early twenties, and its publication brought her not only fame but the attentions of a handsome soldier, Major (later Lieutenant-General Sir) Frederick Browning, whom she married.

She continued writing under her maiden name, and her subsequent novels became bestsellers, earning her enormous wealth and fame. Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, My Cousin Rachel, and Jamaica Inn, and the short stories The Birds and Don't Look Now/Not After Midnight. While Alfred Hitchcock's films based upon her novels proceeded to make her one of the best-known authors in the world, she enjoyed the life of a fairy princess in a mansion in Cornwall called Menabilly, which served as the model for Manderley in Rebecca.

Daphne du Maurier was obsessed with the past. She intensively researched the lives of Francis and Anthony Bacon, the history of Cornwall, the Regency period, and nineteenth-century France and England. Above all, however, she was obsessed with her own family history, which she chronicled in Gerald: A Portrait, a biography of her father; The du Mauriers, a study of her family which focused on her grandfather, George du Maurier, the novelist and illustrator for Punch; The Glassblowers, a novel based upon the lives of her du Maurier ancestors; and Growing Pains, an autobiography that ignores nearly 50 years of her life in favour of the joyful and more romantic period of her youth. Daphne du Maurier can best be understood in terms of her remarkable and paradoxical family, the ghosts which haunted her life and fiction.

While contemporary writers were dealing critically with such subjects as the war, alienation, religion, poverty, Marxism, psychology and art, and experimenting with new techniques such as the stream of consciousness, du Maurier produced 'old-fashioned' novels with straightforward narratives that appealed to a popular audience's love of fantasy, adventure, sexuality and mystery. At an early age, she recognised that her readership was comprised principally of women, and she cultivated their loyal following through several decades by embodying their desires and dreams in her novels and short stories.

In some of her novels, however, she went beyond the technique of the formulaic romance to achieve a powerful psychological realism reflecting her intense feelings about her father, and to a lesser degree, her mother. This vision, which underlies Julius, Rebecca and The Parasites, is that of an author overwhelmed by the memory of her father's commanding presence. In Julius and The Parasites, for example, she introduces the image of a domineering but deadly father and the daring subject of incest.

In Rebecca, on the other hand, du Maurier fuses psychological realism with a sophisticated version of the Cinderella story.

Reviews

[Amanda]

A short book of preachy moralizing tales, essentially Du Maurier’s part in moral re-armament during the war. Not a crucial book for her fans to read.

[Totos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fix your hearts, or die. An alternative title.

[Morten Vindberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Small episodes about British people and their way of managing the fact that their country once again has come at war with Germany. One clear message is that if a war is to be won, selfishness and self-sufficiency must first be overcome. There are also strong personal points of views from Du Maurier and it is worth recognizing and appreciating that hatred against the aggressor is at no point a theme. As always when it comes to Du Maurier, everything very well-written.

[Linda Orvis · Rating 2 out of 5]

du Maurier wrote several books of short stories. The Birds, Kiss Me Again Stranger, and Don't Look Now, were made into movies. It was interesting to read "The Birds," because it showed how many liberties Hollywood takes with books and stories.

[Tracey]

This book is about the Moral Re-Armament movement of WWII era and beyond. It sold 650,000 copies in Great Britain.

[Petra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Urgh - I didn’t expect this. I’ve not read much du Maurier yet, but I’ve liked what I read so far. So this short book of stories was such a disappointment.
All the stories are based around moral re-armament, which was a big thing between the wars to encourage people to be more community minded. Fair enough - we could all do with some moral re-armament! But du Maurier’s examples were all based on accepting that God knows best and that we should listen to our inner good selves, which is God speaking to us.
This read like those types of moral books that Sunday schools would give out as prizes. Simplistic, mawkish and incredibly worthy and dull.
I shall try not to let this put me off of the big stack of du Maurier that’s waiting on my tbr pile!

[Anthony Batterton · Rating 1 out of 5]

A great author doing her conventional worst for the war effort. I've rarely read such simplistic moralistic tripe. The lesson of every vignette is that every problem can be vanquished by rejecting selfishness and doing everything cheerfully and uncomplainingly.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a strange little book of patriotic fables, designed to inspire civic duty and good spirits of British citizens during WWII. The stories read more like advertisements or PSAs than they do actual fiction.

[A. Macbeth’s bks · Rating 1 out of 5]

My year of reading Daphne du Maurier.
This was her pamphlet in support of the British WWII effort.

[Noël]

Wartime propaganda.