The du Mauriers Quotes

“There was a garden at the back, a delight to the children, and a green gate in the wall that led to a private avenue, all tangled undergrowth and mystery. And away behind this was the Bois itself, the enchanted forest, stretching surely to eternity, thought the children; a paradise with no beginning and no end. It was these years in Passy, between 1842 and 1847, that Kicky was to describe nearly fifty years later in Peter Ibbetson.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“And, while her mother laughed and chatted, teasing Lord Folkestone in her own inimitable way, whispering oddities to him behind her hand that made him shout with laughter, the child Ellen sat silent, like a little sallow mouse, watching the play between them with a strange inborn sense of disapproval. If this was how grown-up people spent their time, she had little use for them; for herself she preferred books and music, having a thirst for knowledge of all kinds that her mother declared to be positively wearisome in a child not yet thirteen.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“Whoever has loved much, felt deeply, trodden a certain path in happiness or pain, leaves an imprint of himself for evermore”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“So they pass out of memory and out of these pages, the figures of fifty, of a hundred years ago. Some of them were comic, and some a little tragic, and all of them had faults, but once they were living, breathing men and women like the rest of us, possessing the world that we possess to-day.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“The happy thing about success was that it meant he could provide for his children and his grandchildren, and they would none of them know want and dire poverty as he had done. He would take care that there would be enough for all of them when he died—enough for distant cousins and little grand-nephews and the straggling remnants of the Busson clan.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“he knew that the twenty-nine years that lay behind him counted as nothing in his life; they were buried and forgotten, and this was the beginning.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“Oh, mamma dearest, don’t let’s look for the clouds till they are on us,’ he said in despair. ‘Things must come all right for us in the end. As long as my eye does not fail me we need none of us starve.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“but, Jove! did they never have a quiet laugh to themselves and say, ‘What the hell do any of us matter after all?”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“I’m convinced that a chap’s best chance of doing his finest work is by sticking very much to himself, and of course working very hard, and, most important of all, by talking very little about it.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“Tom Jeckell, Kicky’s friend of Pentonville days, was now a budding architect, and resumed his former friendship, and Kicky began to consider himself one of the luckiest fellows in the world to possess so many affectionate friends.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“At twenty-six she had held her little world between her ruthless, exquisite fingers, and here was her grandson, at the same age, launching himself into the problematical future, in which he was to win fame by satirising the same society she had led by the ears at the beginning of the century.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“Kicky put the ten pounds back in the envelope. It was really very good of mamma. All she had in the world was that rather inadequate but so eagerly expected little dividend every quarter. He was not even sure where it came from—something to do with his grandmother who had died at Boulogne.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“it was all very worrying to be the mother of a family. Nothing but anxiety from morning till night. Louise was better off single, even if she was lonely.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“You ought to go in for illustrating,’ argued his friend. ‘I’m convinced that is your true métier. Have a look at this.’ And he threw over a copy of Punch’s Almanack. ‘See what you think of the work of Charles Keene and John Leech,’ continued Armstrong. ‘They are both on the Punch staff. Isn’t that sort of thing much more in your line than what you are doing now?’ Kicky did not answer. He was turning over the pages of Punch in fascination.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“He realised now that there was no hope for his left eye; detachment of the retina was complete; and just before Christmas came again the oculist told him that there was a chance his right eye would also become affected. The shock was terrible.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“Carry must have been the germ that produced the ultimate Trilby, there can be no two opinions about it; she had the same camaraderie, the same boyish attraction, the same funny shy reserve. Kicky absorbed her, without realising it, and absorbed the game of mesmerising at the same time, so that the two things combined and became one at the back of his mind. He forgot all about them for nearly forty years—and then he wrote Trilby and made a fortune at sixty.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“This time the man confessed that there was slight detachment of the retina, and that Kicky must give up all thought of working for several months, and devote himself to the cure. He must have treatment at least once a week, continue with the ordinary bathing and poulticing at home, and put himself on a diet. He must, in fact, resign himself to being more or less of an invalid for the immediate future.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“The great man made all sorts of tests with mysterious instruments, and finally told him there was very little wrong, merely a congestion of the retina, and gave him some drops for use every night and morning, and told him to go away for a few weeks to the sea, and he would be well by the end of the month.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“and he found suddenly that he could not focus properly; the man’s head dwindled to the size of a pin. He clapped his hand over his left eye, and the head returned to normal, but when he shut his right eye and looked towards the model with his left eye only, he could not see anything at all, not even his companions on either side of him.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“The famous studio in Trilby, shared by the three friends—Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee—really existed in the rue Notre-Dame des Champs, and was No. 53. Tom Armstrong, Poynter, Lamont, and Kicky took possession of it on New Year’s Day, 1857.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“His best friends were Tom Armstrong, who was two years older than himself and had been painting now for several years, and a Scotsman, Lamont, with a dry sense of humour and a twinkling eye. There was Rowley, too, a giant of wonderful physique and the tender heart of a child, moved to tremendous rage if anyone insulted his friends; Poynter, and Aleco Ionides, and the sinister, slightly crazy Jimmy Whistler, who wore his dark curls long and was a great poseur, even in those days.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“Living alone in Paris was very different from living in his own home with his family. In the old days there had been the familiar routine of day by day—meals at regular hours, the companionship of his schoolfellows, all the normal bustle of a happy, monotonous existence. Now he was a friendless young man, with no money and no profession, and he realised, with a little stab of disappointment, that he did not know what to do with himself.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“From the way that doctor talked anyone would think he was violent,’ she continued, ‘your papa, the gentlest of creatures, who has always hated cruelty in any form. I shall never forget his anger once, long ago, when he saw a man ill-treating a dog. I can see him now, after he had beaten the fellow and sent him away, taking the dog in his arms and holding it. He took it back and bandaged the poor broken paw, and the tears were running down his cheeks,”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“Doctors he would not tolerate; he had always believed in treating himself, and now he had not even the energy to do this.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“Nonsense,’ snapped Ellen. ‘It would cause a panic at once. If you feel ill, go to your room and lie down. The master is going to make up this medicine.’ ‘If it’s like the stuff he gave me for kidney trouble, I’d rather have the cholera, madam,’ said the frightened woman.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“He was too fond of his home, of his family, of all the little familiar things that went to make his daily life. He did not want these things to change. He wished that time could stand still, or even go back—anything rather than go forward. This business of growing-up, and becoming a man, and facing the future—he did not care for it at all.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“He had been dedicated to science since his first birthday, and Louis-Mathurin would hear of no other career for his eldest son. Kicky was seventeen on the sixth of March, and did not look much like a prospective scientist.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“They would settle down together exceedingly well. The union would make up to Louise for all she had lost twenty years before. And George had always been the sober, steadying sort, hating nonsense of any kind. There would be nothing romantic in such a marriage, naturally; but, then, one did not expect romance when one was past fifty. One needed companionship, and a comfortable home. It was only superficial people, like their poor silly mother, who needed this constant excitement and amusement until they were over seventy.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“Now that the Duke of York was dead it was an ideal opportunity to break her contract. The book would have a tremendous sale in London, the publisher had intimated; everyone would talk about it, and her portrait would be published in the papers, and all the old notoriety, which, truth to tell, she had missed sadly during the years of retirement, would be hers again.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers

“It was really very lucky for Kicky and Gyggy and little Isabella, and all the future generations; that their kind grandmamma had succeeded so well in her profession that she was able to live in honourable retirement and keep them all clothed and fed. But for her generosity, and the allowance she paid her daughter, the Busson du Mauriers would have fared very ill indeed. It is even doubtful whether they would have survived at all.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The du Mauriers