Memories of mother at Menabilly
When Daphne du Maurier was expecting her first baby, the nursery was decorated in blue, its cupboards inscribed with the name ‘Christian’ – the character in The Pilgrim’s Progress she identified with when young. There was no doubt in her mind that she’d be having a son. So when Tessa was born in July 1933, Daphne was desperately disappointed.
Significantly, Tessa doesn’t remember ever being cuddled. Her sister Flavia fared no better: her 1994 memoir begins, ‘Rebecca and I were conceived about the same time in 1936, but whereas the novel was very much planned and thought out, I was unquestionably a mistake.’
In 1940, Daphne got her wish when Christian, known as Kits, was born. Flavia and Tessa remember their astonishment as Daphne bathed, dressed and hugged their brother – things they’d never experienced. ‘She always said she brought him up “by hand”, and “I did everything for him”,’ says Flavia. Not quite everything, though, as Flavia adds, ‘Nanny did a lot, and we had a nursemaid.’ Even with the much-longed-for son, there were limits to maternal affection.
Such favouritism should surely have led to lifelong sibling rivalry, but the three are close, though they live far apart: Tessa in London, Flavia in Somerset and Kits in Cornwall, in the house where his parents met. The Loving Spirit, Daphne’s first novel, written in Ferryside, the holiday home bought by her parents, captivated Major ‘Tommy’ Browning, who travelled in his boat Ygdrasil to Fowey in search of its author. They married three months later. Daphne wanted children – six sons, she said once – though motherhood was never allowed to come between her and her work.
Left: Flavia, Kits and Tessa at Readymoney Cove in Fowey. Right: Flavia, Kits and Tessa at Ferryside
Tessa’s first awareness of her mother was in Egypt, where her father was posted. ‘As a small tot in Alexandria, I have absolutely no memory of her ever picking me up.’ The Christmas after Flavia’s birth, Daphne left the sisters with their nanny while she and Tommy went to Ferryside: she needed to finish Rebecca. It was the fi rst of many stays at Nanny’s home.
Things were very different with Kits, though there seems to have been remarkably little resentment. ‘Life was rather dreary (it was during the war) and here was this rather sweet little baby,’ says Tessa. ‘He was very smiley, always jolly. Amazingly, Flavia and I were swept up in the euphoria – I don’t remember feeling jealous. We just accepted that he was the favourite.’
Perhaps it helped that there was a family precedent: Daphne was the favourite daughter of her father, matinee idol Gerald du Maurier, yet she and her two sisters were firm friends all their lives. In fact, Daphne did later involve herself more with her daughters. ‘She’d read to us, give us history lessons and tell us about the books she was writing,’ says Tessa, who remembers Daphne reading bits of Frenchman’s Creek to her and Flavia as she wrote. But she was infinitely more affectionate and tactile with Kits. Flavia recalls how they’d sit ‘squished together in a chair,’ a closeness the girls never knew.
Daphne’s devotion was rooted in her intense relationship with her father, as Kits points out: ‘It was a sort of incestuous thing of Gerald, who’d died long before I was born, saying he’d like to come back as her son. I’m certain she wanted a son because of her father: she never stopped telling me… that I was so like him.’
Kits, as a child, had more privileges – he was allowed into the room where his mother worked, though he learned to play quietly with his toy buses. Later, when she had a writing hut at Menabilly, the mansion she’d discovered in 1928 and moved into in 1943 (and perhaps more important to her than any human being), her seclusion was sacrosanct. Not even Kits could interrupt.
As for life at Menabilly, Daphne took it for granted that the children would love it too – though their memories include a fear of going upstairs at night. They do all talk of the sense of fun, the occasions of giggling with their parents, of games in the Long Room. But for much of the time, Flavia’s role was to keep Kits company. ‘He wasn’t good at being on his own; he demanded attention. Tessa never joined in our games – unless we were playing Roundheads and Cavaliers. She thought we were babyish.’ She was, she thought, kept young for her age. ‘As I got older and more interested in my pony, I became awfully bored with having to look after him. I adored him, but there were moments when I just didn’t want to play cricket and football.’
Tessa, meanwhile, was leading a solitary life. Her solace was books: ‘I was a tremendous reader.’ And she had her goats: ‘both female: Freddie and Doris. I’d sit and hug them.’ Looking after bantams and rabbits too, she was ‘very busy’. But she felt very alone. ‘Flavia and Kits played together. There were no friends for me.’
Companionship with her sister might have remedied this, but they didn’t get on at all. ‘I think I was horrid to Flave. I’ve often wondered why, whether I was sort of jealous.’ Flavia remembers all too vividly: ‘I’d walk into a room and she’d walk out. One thing Tessa couldn’t bear was for me to go into her bedroom, but I rather liked to go and look at her books and things if I knew she was out. I was caught red-handed once. Things were especially bad when Tod, my mother’s old governess, came to teach us. Tessa piled books in front of her on the schoolroom table so she didn’t have to see my face. So I was put in a little box room and given set things to do. It was awful.’
Left: Daphne with Tessa (right) and Flavia, outside Ferryside. Right: Kits with his boat at a rockpool on the beach at Polridmouth
Then, when Tessa was 18 and she had a boyfriend, the squabbles ceased. ‘I just stopped going for Flave. Once we were grown up we became great friends.’ Flavia says, ‘It was as if, when somebody cared about Tessa… things got better. Like her, I married young, so we had something in common.’
Kits, deeply fond of Flavia, was unaware of the schism between his sisters. ‘I simply don’t remember any terrific aggravation between them, but maybe it’s because I was so self-indulgent, and of course being doted on by Mum meant that it didn’t really impinge.’ He feels that life must have been hard on Flavia, as the middle child. ‘I was obviously spoilt rotten. And the eldest child gets undivided attention – from aunts, for example: Tessa made a terrific effort with them, but Flave and I didn’t have that bond with them. Tessa had attention, maybe not from my mother, but from Nanny, and my father – they’d go sailing at weekends.’
Though their life at Menabilly was remote, Daphne wasn’t spared public attention: Tessa reveals that American soldiers stationed nearby during the war, who’d read Rebecca, would arrive in Jeeps demanding autographs. Daphne, horrified, sent Tessa, aged 11, to deal with them. ‘I rather enjoyed that: I’d explain that my mother had gone out to lunch.’ A Royal visit in 1950 (Tommy was Comptroller General to the Household of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh) caused similar agitation for Daphne, while Flavia remembers the difficulty of curtsying to Prince Philip in corduroy trousers.
By this time, with Tessa at boarding school (‘I couldn’t wait to go’) and Kits having been dispatched to his father’s prep school at the age of eight (‘I’d never been anywhere before, not even a little local school’), Flavia was more of a companion to her mother. She shared Daphne’s passion for Menabilly (it’s no surprise that Flavia’s favourite books are Rebecca and The King’s General, both featuring the house) and relished their walks together, treasuring the times Daphne remarked on the similarity between them: ‘Once she said, “You’re awfully pretty. Just like me.”’ Better still was the ‘secret knowledge’ they shared, from which Kits and Tessa were excluded. ‘When I went to school, she’d write long letters telling me about herself, and she’d say, “For God’s sake, don’t tell Tessa or Kits.”’
As her daughters became adults, Daphne’s relationship with them became more companionable. She took Tessa to France when she was 16, the first of many holidays together, and encouraged Flavia to attend the arts school in Paris where Daphne’s grandfather George du Maurier learnt his craft – she worked as a colourist and later illustrated jackets for two of Daphne’s books. Tessa’s first job was doing PR for the Savoy hotel during Coronation year (‘rather fun’), a career she returned to when she divorced. She married again, as did Flavia, now a widow.
Kits’s first job was as an assistant to film director Carol Reed (an early boyfriend of Daphne’s), but he moved into making documentaries for industry; his priority was his family. He’d married young and was a father at 25. ‘I think a father being there in the first five years of a child’s life is the most important thing, which of course I didn’t have – couldn’t have, because of the war. I always regret not having a close relationship with my father.’ He also worked with Daphne, on a film about Yeats as well as a joyful collaboration on Vanishing Cornwall. ‘Then when mother died, her estate was in turmoil, and as one of the literary executors I concentrated on getting that into shape, and preserving her memory.’
Tod's watercolour of Menabilly
That was when the siblings formed a partnership to deal with royalties and business decisions. There can be glitches in their relationship, as when, after Daphne’s death, Tessa arranged for Ygdrasil to be burned ‘without consulting. I think Kits was rather cross with me.’ Flavia admits to occasional flashbacks when they are all together: ‘There I am, back to being 10 again.’
But it’s striking that not only do they get along better than many siblings who were treated equally as children, but their memories of Daphne as a mother are positive, and she was, all agree, ‘a frightfully good grandmother, always interested’. Tessa even thinks that Daphne was ‘very good, in a way, at treating us all the same. OK, she made a fuss of Kits, but she was very fair-minded.’
‘We see eye to eye about everything,’ says Flavia. ‘Thank goodness! And when we get together, we talk about the same ridiculous things in our childhood. We laugh like mad.’
Daphne du Maurier At Home, by Hilary Macaskill, is published by Frances Lincoln, priced £25. © Hilary Macaskill
Significantly, Tessa doesn’t remember ever being cuddled. Her sister Flavia fared no better: her 1994 memoir begins, ‘Rebecca and I were conceived about the same time in 1936, but whereas the novel was very much planned and thought out, I was unquestionably a mistake.’
In 1940, Daphne got her wish when Christian, known as Kits, was born. Flavia and Tessa remember their astonishment as Daphne bathed, dressed and hugged their brother – things they’d never experienced. ‘She always said she brought him up “by hand”, and “I did everything for him”,’ says Flavia. Not quite everything, though, as Flavia adds, ‘Nanny did a lot, and we had a nursemaid.’ Even with the much-longed-for son, there were limits to maternal affection.
Such favouritism should surely have led to lifelong sibling rivalry, but the three are close, though they live far apart: Tessa in London, Flavia in Somerset and Kits in Cornwall, in the house where his parents met. The Loving Spirit, Daphne’s first novel, written in Ferryside, the holiday home bought by her parents, captivated Major ‘Tommy’ Browning, who travelled in his boat Ygdrasil to Fowey in search of its author. They married three months later. Daphne wanted children – six sons, she said once – though motherhood was never allowed to come between her and her work.
Left: Flavia, Kits and Tessa at Readymoney Cove in Fowey. Right: Flavia, Kits and Tessa at FerrysideTessa’s first awareness of her mother was in Egypt, where her father was posted. ‘As a small tot in Alexandria, I have absolutely no memory of her ever picking me up.’ The Christmas after Flavia’s birth, Daphne left the sisters with their nanny while she and Tommy went to Ferryside: she needed to finish Rebecca. It was the fi rst of many stays at Nanny’s home.
Things were very different with Kits, though there seems to have been remarkably little resentment. ‘Life was rather dreary (it was during the war) and here was this rather sweet little baby,’ says Tessa. ‘He was very smiley, always jolly. Amazingly, Flavia and I were swept up in the euphoria – I don’t remember feeling jealous. We just accepted that he was the favourite.’
Perhaps it helped that there was a family precedent: Daphne was the favourite daughter of her father, matinee idol Gerald du Maurier, yet she and her two sisters were firm friends all their lives. In fact, Daphne did later involve herself more with her daughters. ‘She’d read to us, give us history lessons and tell us about the books she was writing,’ says Tessa, who remembers Daphne reading bits of Frenchman’s Creek to her and Flavia as she wrote. But she was infinitely more affectionate and tactile with Kits. Flavia recalls how they’d sit ‘squished together in a chair,’ a closeness the girls never knew.
Daphne’s devotion was rooted in her intense relationship with her father, as Kits points out: ‘It was a sort of incestuous thing of Gerald, who’d died long before I was born, saying he’d like to come back as her son. I’m certain she wanted a son because of her father: she never stopped telling me… that I was so like him.’
Kits, as a child, had more privileges – he was allowed into the room where his mother worked, though he learned to play quietly with his toy buses. Later, when she had a writing hut at Menabilly, the mansion she’d discovered in 1928 and moved into in 1943 (and perhaps more important to her than any human being), her seclusion was sacrosanct. Not even Kits could interrupt.
As for life at Menabilly, Daphne took it for granted that the children would love it too – though their memories include a fear of going upstairs at night. They do all talk of the sense of fun, the occasions of giggling with their parents, of games in the Long Room. But for much of the time, Flavia’s role was to keep Kits company. ‘He wasn’t good at being on his own; he demanded attention. Tessa never joined in our games – unless we were playing Roundheads and Cavaliers. She thought we were babyish.’ She was, she thought, kept young for her age. ‘As I got older and more interested in my pony, I became awfully bored with having to look after him. I adored him, but there were moments when I just didn’t want to play cricket and football.’
Tessa, meanwhile, was leading a solitary life. Her solace was books: ‘I was a tremendous reader.’ And she had her goats: ‘both female: Freddie and Doris. I’d sit and hug them.’ Looking after bantams and rabbits too, she was ‘very busy’. But she felt very alone. ‘Flavia and Kits played together. There were no friends for me.’
Companionship with her sister might have remedied this, but they didn’t get on at all. ‘I think I was horrid to Flave. I’ve often wondered why, whether I was sort of jealous.’ Flavia remembers all too vividly: ‘I’d walk into a room and she’d walk out. One thing Tessa couldn’t bear was for me to go into her bedroom, but I rather liked to go and look at her books and things if I knew she was out. I was caught red-handed once. Things were especially bad when Tod, my mother’s old governess, came to teach us. Tessa piled books in front of her on the schoolroom table so she didn’t have to see my face. So I was put in a little box room and given set things to do. It was awful.’
Left: Daphne with Tessa (right) and Flavia, outside Ferryside. Right: Kits with his boat at a rockpool on the beach at PolridmouthThen, when Tessa was 18 and she had a boyfriend, the squabbles ceased. ‘I just stopped going for Flave. Once we were grown up we became great friends.’ Flavia says, ‘It was as if, when somebody cared about Tessa… things got better. Like her, I married young, so we had something in common.’
Kits, deeply fond of Flavia, was unaware of the schism between his sisters. ‘I simply don’t remember any terrific aggravation between them, but maybe it’s because I was so self-indulgent, and of course being doted on by Mum meant that it didn’t really impinge.’ He feels that life must have been hard on Flavia, as the middle child. ‘I was obviously spoilt rotten. And the eldest child gets undivided attention – from aunts, for example: Tessa made a terrific effort with them, but Flave and I didn’t have that bond with them. Tessa had attention, maybe not from my mother, but from Nanny, and my father – they’d go sailing at weekends.’
Though their life at Menabilly was remote, Daphne wasn’t spared public attention: Tessa reveals that American soldiers stationed nearby during the war, who’d read Rebecca, would arrive in Jeeps demanding autographs. Daphne, horrified, sent Tessa, aged 11, to deal with them. ‘I rather enjoyed that: I’d explain that my mother had gone out to lunch.’ A Royal visit in 1950 (Tommy was Comptroller General to the Household of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh) caused similar agitation for Daphne, while Flavia remembers the difficulty of curtsying to Prince Philip in corduroy trousers.
By this time, with Tessa at boarding school (‘I couldn’t wait to go’) and Kits having been dispatched to his father’s prep school at the age of eight (‘I’d never been anywhere before, not even a little local school’), Flavia was more of a companion to her mother. She shared Daphne’s passion for Menabilly (it’s no surprise that Flavia’s favourite books are Rebecca and The King’s General, both featuring the house) and relished their walks together, treasuring the times Daphne remarked on the similarity between them: ‘Once she said, “You’re awfully pretty. Just like me.”’ Better still was the ‘secret knowledge’ they shared, from which Kits and Tessa were excluded. ‘When I went to school, she’d write long letters telling me about herself, and she’d say, “For God’s sake, don’t tell Tessa or Kits.”’
As her daughters became adults, Daphne’s relationship with them became more companionable. She took Tessa to France when she was 16, the first of many holidays together, and encouraged Flavia to attend the arts school in Paris where Daphne’s grandfather George du Maurier learnt his craft – she worked as a colourist and later illustrated jackets for two of Daphne’s books. Tessa’s first job was doing PR for the Savoy hotel during Coronation year (‘rather fun’), a career she returned to when she divorced. She married again, as did Flavia, now a widow.
Kits’s first job was as an assistant to film director Carol Reed (an early boyfriend of Daphne’s), but he moved into making documentaries for industry; his priority was his family. He’d married young and was a father at 25. ‘I think a father being there in the first five years of a child’s life is the most important thing, which of course I didn’t have – couldn’t have, because of the war. I always regret not having a close relationship with my father.’ He also worked with Daphne, on a film about Yeats as well as a joyful collaboration on Vanishing Cornwall. ‘Then when mother died, her estate was in turmoil, and as one of the literary executors I concentrated on getting that into shape, and preserving her memory.’
Tod's watercolour of MenabillyThat was when the siblings formed a partnership to deal with royalties and business decisions. There can be glitches in their relationship, as when, after Daphne’s death, Tessa arranged for Ygdrasil to be burned ‘without consulting. I think Kits was rather cross with me.’ Flavia admits to occasional flashbacks when they are all together: ‘There I am, back to being 10 again.’
But it’s striking that not only do they get along better than many siblings who were treated equally as children, but their memories of Daphne as a mother are positive, and she was, all agree, ‘a frightfully good grandmother, always interested’. Tessa even thinks that Daphne was ‘very good, in a way, at treating us all the same. OK, she made a fuss of Kits, but she was very fair-minded.’
‘We see eye to eye about everything,’ says Flavia. ‘Thank goodness! And when we get together, we talk about the same ridiculous things in our childhood. We laugh like mad.’
Daphne du Maurier At Home, by Hilary Macaskill, is published by Frances Lincoln, priced £25. © Hilary Macaskill