Letters from Menabilly Quotes

“Bing had arranged her chapel at Kilmarth in one of the mysterious stone basement rooms, where one rarely penetrated. The way down to it was by a twisting stair, opening out of the front hall. On the altar she had placed a crucifix, and all her holy relics, and each week she arranged a little vase of fresh flowers for it. She loved this little chapel, and was proud of it; she often went down there to say a private prayer. In our last conversation on the day before she died, she surprised me by saying that she had gone down there, and said a prayer for me; this might have warned me of what was to happen, but it did not. Perhaps I did not even want to know.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“All the wild birds are coming in, and the east wind has been piercing. I still think it is fun (apart from the Doom of the Aged!) like a siege!”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Anyway, it will give me something to brew about. And there is still a Jerusalem story* to do, and that story about a husband and wife in Venice† that I told you I wanted to do, where the husband suddenly sees his wife passing in one of those vaporettos on the Grand Canal, and yet he knew he had seen her off to fly home to England that morning! I might get about six longish short stories, that would fit into a book, and be sold separately to Journal or Good Housekeeping, in America.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Dearest Oriel, I have a Doom, but a conceited Doom. Kits, when he was here, took some photographs of me, and also a proper photographer came from St Ives to do me too, and I crumbed they would look well for future books. But they make poor Tray look just like an old peasant woman of ninety – far older and more wrinkled than Lady Vyvyan, and I nearly cried when I saw them. I know I am lined, but I had not realized how badly! And the awful expression on my face, like a murderess. Talk about being ready for St Cuthbert’s – well! The thing is, everybody these days takes photos with tiny cameras and no lighting, so I suppose one’s bad points come out worse. What a blow to one’s Silly Values! Oh, me ... And there I was, swishing about thinking I looked quite nice.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Well, you will tell me in your own time how it happened, and I won’t harp on it any more now, because you will have to face up to the performance of the funeral, and the great strain ‘of all that. I don’t know why people have to have those awful great Memorial Services, but I think it gives a self-righteous feeling to those left behind – I don’t mean family, but friends – like a ‘send-off’, when a person catches a boat-train. Moper loathed them, would never attend them, and that is why I would not allow one for him, and put in the Times: ‘No memorial service at his own request.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Their small boy of seven is very whiney with them, though all right with us, alone. But on the new boat – which is bliss – he is very restless, and children can be a nuisance on a boat. Why is it that children you make up in books are always nicer than real children? Think of Lord Fauntleroy, seven, and Humphrey in Misunderstood!”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“You don’t know how hurtful it is to have rotten, sneering reviews, time and time again throughout my life. The fact that I sold well in the past, never really made up for them. Of course making money has been very useful, because of being able to afford Mena, and bring up the children, but I somehow don’t connect money-making with the writing,”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Oh, I must tell you, so interesting. You know that Birds man, who said he had written a Birds book too, and was cross, and I was afraid there would be another Main case? 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! His birds were not ordinary birds like mine, but great strange things from outer space (and this was written in 1936), and they turned out to be the souls of all the people in the world, who had somehow pushed them out of their inner selves; and so the wretched souls, turned into birds, were furious and sought revenge.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“book called The Birds, and it sounded just like mine. He was getting all worked up and cross, saying Hitchcock had taken the film from his, and not mine. Then he apparently took Counsel’s Opinion, who said it was no good him doing anything, so luckily he is not to go on with his claim, so-called. But at least three fools in America have made ‘claims’, saying they have written books or stories about savage birds, and my heart began to sink, in case some awful great Main case started up in the US (like that Rebecca thing) and I had to fly out, and give evidence. These brutes just do it for publicity and money, and film people like Hitchcock don’t care; it makes more publicity, and any claim always comes back on the author. There seems to be no protection for well-known authors when this happens, because after all it’s only one’s word against somebody else’s, that one has never read their stupid stories! And as these people are always insolvent, there is no hope of making a counter-claim against them, or getting them to pay costs if they bring a case. Actually, I don’t think anything will come from it all, but I can’t help remembering that awful Rebecca lawsuit. That person’s story was rotten, and not a bit like Rebecca at all, but they were still able to file a lawsuit, and one had to go to America, and do all that witness business.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Now, of course, he’s all over me again, because he hopes The Glass-Blowers will do well. But I don’t believe it will sell in great numbers, as it doesn’t get exciting until halfway through, and readers are so impatient. But you know my thing these days about no books really selling enormously, except about animals – Elsa”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“What did you think of Rebecca on tv? I don’t think it had dated too badly, but some things hit me – and it was silly, the way they made Rebecca hit her head on a block, instead of being shot by Maxim. And they muffed the fancy-dress ball, and the wreck: it was all too hurried, one did not know what was happening. In the book she had to go through the whole Ball without speaking to Maxim, who was on a hard chair beside her, and then it was in early dawn the wreck came. I suppose you thought to yourself, now Peg would have been much better than Olivier, and it would have worked out rather well, imagining Peg thinking of his first wife, and being plunged in deep thoughts ...! Of course it was old-fashioned in 1938 when it was written – I remember critics saying it was a queer throwback to the 19th-century Gothic novel. But I shall never know quite why it seized upon everyone’s imagination, not just teenagers and shop girls, like people try to say now, but every age, and both sexes.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“The Princess Casimassima – which I loved. I have a thing about Henry James, and I love the peculiar way he writes, rather involved. This was an early one, and not too involved.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Dooming, floodish weather is everywhere, and I bet ‘la Seine monte!’ Tons of love, Bing. ________ ‘La Seine monte!’ was no joke but a dangerous reality when, with the spring and autumn floods, we rose almost to the level of the Boulevard. When we reached the tops of the trees, warning signals went out, and it soon became difficult not to become entangled in their branches.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“So, if we would be frightened then, how much more frightened at thirty years hence? Track crippled, in some Old People’s Home, and you – heaven knows – rather bad – moody, aged about sixty, and living heaven knows where. It’s like the Brontës and their birthday notes – not seeing ahead, thank goodness! One clings to present security.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Although outwardly resigned to my godmother’s death, inwardly I had not truly accepted it. Well-intentioned people assured me that those we love can never die, while we keep them alive in memory, but I had always considered this a singularly specious argument. Why should existence depend upon anything so fallible as human memory, which diminishes with age? Either there is life after death, or we are snuffed out like candles; there is no way round this age-old dilemma, wriggle as we may.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“I went to Mass one Sunday, and there is a thing in one of the prayers which says: ‘And save us from Everlasting Doom.’ I think I am having Everlasting Doom at the moment. I’m going to try and stay down here in April, and be here for poor Kits, who I had to chuck so in the summer. He has passed his test and got his car, and everything, and he is so jolly to be with, and just can’t be depressed.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Anyway, Moper did not want to fork out from his Trust to pay. That’s the awful bitter thing, I have provided for all of them, and have no capital myself. It’s such dreadful King Lear! We have just had another bout at home, which was lovely, but for the fact (terrible admission!) that I am never alone. I sneaked out to do some painting – which shows I am beginning to brew – and Moper hung about looking hang-dog, and kept asking when I would be in for tea. You see, I’m sure deep down he grudges my work, and wants to see me as a person waiting to cook his steak.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Anyway, Moper did not want to fork out from his Trust to pay. That’s the awful bitter thing, I have provided for all of them, and have no capital myself. It’s such dreadful King Lear! We have just had another bout at home, which was lovely, but for the fact (terrible admission!) that I am never alone. I sneaked out to do some painting – which shows I am beginning to brew – and Moper hung about looking hang-dog, and kept asking when I would be in for tea. You see, I’m sure deep down he grudges my work, and”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“For years, Lady du Maurier had been suffering from a depressive form of senility, devotedly cared for by Angela and a nurse. Every year, Lady du Maurier and the nurse were installed at Mena for a time, while Angela had a much-needed break. Bing had never been very close to her mother in adult life, and Tod declared that in her childhood she had even been afraid of her. I always felt this explained much about Bing’s fear of emotions, and her secretiveness. It was all the more consoling to know that there was peace between them at the end, and that a loving kiss could even break through the barrier of a deep coma, to reach out to her. It comforted Bing, at a time when she was desperately in need of comfort, and for a while gave her the feeling that death is not loss, but a beginning.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Along with interest in my French forebears, I’ve been beeding at the Brontë Juvenilia again, and suddenly wrote to the old man who edited Shakespeare Head with T. J. Wise. (You know Wise turned out to be an awful forger of signatures?) Well, the old man, Symington, who is still alive, wrote back to me and said he so agreed with me that poor Branwell had been chucked by everyone from Mrs Gaskell to Fanny.* He said he was sure that lots of the Juvenile tales attributed to Charlotte had been written by Branwell, and that someone (he didn’t say who) had written Charlotte Brontë on the manuscripts before they were sold to America and the Brit. Mus. (A Charlotte signature would fetch more than a Branwell.)”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“I do wonder if you will find anything in the Bib. Nat.? You may be put on the wrong track, by finding a curious little book on abolishing passports, of all things, by the émigré’s son, Louis-Mathurin Busson du Maurier, who wrote it about 1835 or later, I believe. Or, you may get an even more muddling line by finding a book written by someone called Louis du Maurier, who was nothing to do with us at all, but lived years before, or an Aubéry du Maurier of that same family; they are nothing to do with the Bussons. It was these people that put my poor Trilby grandfather on the wrong track, in the last century. He heard about them, and of course thought they were ancestors. I’ve been into it all, and they are no relations, so don’t be sidetracked by these people. The chap you want is Robert Mathurin Busson (may have du Maurier tacked on, or may not), who emigrated in 1789,”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“I think in my old days I shall have to have a Salon, like crumby people in the eighteenth century, and friends will come in to have Main talks while I get up, and dress (tho’ I can’t concentrate then, either!).”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“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.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“And when you say Rachel was not real to you, it was just the opposite. Rachel was so Pegged, i.e. so much of what I felt about Ellen at that time, and Nelson, all incredibly mixed-up of course, that if I was writing my autobiography, I would have to say it was the most emotionally-felt book I had ever written. After it, I felt dead! And part of me did die, with it. I tell you all”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“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,”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“I wonder why Peter Owen wanted more descriptions of places, rather than of people, in your book?† I always thought publishers grumbled if there were too many descriptions of places, and it was people they wanted.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“he sees himself as Niall in The Parasites – heaven knows how; Niall was much more a facet of myself.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“Besides, someone has just told me that my little girl, who isn’t my little girl really, has gone off in a lorry with some workmen, and I’m rather worried ... so you must see my point!”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“I am becoming more and more interested in the factor of Greed in human nature, which of course is basic Hunger unsatisfied, that wants to be filled, but somehow just misses the point. In fact, my whole new book† is going to be based on this great Main theme, but nobody will know it because it will be (I hope!) an exciting story of relationships in a French family!”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship

“The trouble is, of course, that our ideas of what we want to be do vary very much with our age-group, I suppose. Twenty doesn’t want to be the thirty person, and the thirty person doesn’t want to be the forty one, and so on; and of course it must be terrifying to cling to the age that is passing, because then one becomes a clutching type that feels it has been cheated (if nothing much has happened) or, if a lot has happened, then afraid that it won’t go on!”
― Daphne du Maurier, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship