And yet Gerald did worry. He worried about what he was doing with his own life, where he thought he was going, now that middle age was in sight. He was a highly successful actor, credited with developing a new naturalistic style of acting, but he doubted the value of this. There was a restlessness in him and a desire for greater things, which few guessed at – he seemed, outwardly, so buoyant and optimistic. There was a yearning in him to which he could give no name and which he covered over with apparently inexhaustible high spirits, only to feel a sense of despair about himself because he could not be more serious. When tragedies like his brother-in-law Arthur’s death happened he was more than normally overwhelmed with their pointlessness and cruelty. Lacking any religious beliefs, he had no answers to the questions with which he plagued himself – what was the meaning of his life, was death the end, was there any point to it all? Silence, emptiness, being on his own were a horror to him and made him panic – he wanted always to be busy and surrounded by people so that he would not have to think. Fortunately, his wife Muriel appreciated this and worked hard at ensuring Gerald’s ‘boredom’ was kept at bay. She was a superb organizer, easily able to entertain the hordes of people her husband needed about him to distract and occupy him. An actress herself – Gerald had met her in a production of J. M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton in 1902 – she gave up the stage, without appearing to regret it, before the birth of her third daughter, Jeanne, in 1911, and devoted herself to running Gerald’s life. On the surface, she was successful. As a hostess she excelled, never appearing to weary of providing Gerald with the endless social gatherings which he required. He was put first at all times. Even her mother-in-law, to whom Gerald, as the youngest of her five children, had always seemed most precious, was satisfied with Muriel’s devotion.

  But Muriel was by no means the cipher this exaggerated respect for Gerald’s needs might suggest, nor was her own family insignificant beside the du Mauriers. She was named after her maternal great-grandfather, Charles Muriel Bidwell, whose son founded a prestigious firm of chartered surveyors in Cambridge. Her father, Harry Beaumont, came from an East Anglian family of lawyers. He himself was a solicitor whose practice ran into difficulties after he had moved from Cambridge to Battersea. It was unusual for a young woman of Muriel Beaumont’s background to go on the stage at the turn of the century, but nobody meeting her ever doubted her refinement and she was admired for seeking to earn her own income and contribute towards her family’s. She had a brother, Willie, who was a literary agent and journalist, and a sister, Sybil, known as ‘Billie’, who was a secretary. All three Beaumont children showed some strength of character in the ways in which they reacted to their father’s comparative ill-fortune, and they shared a familial devotion equal to that of the du Mauriers. Gerald, visiting Muriel’s home before they were married, was instantly impressed by the warmth of the Beaumont family life and by the sweetness of her parents.

  For a decade, Muriel, known as ‘Mo’, gave Gerald what he needed: stability, adoration, the comforts of a well-run home. But as he became more dissatisfied with himself Gerald began to grow restless. He could not do without Mo, still loved her, but he felt a new lack. What Mo could not respond to was the mercurial side of Gerald’s character, the side of him which was quick, a touch wicked, even a little crazy. Mo was sensible, calm and, although always charming, never original or challenging. Gerald loved to talk, to tell stories, to indulge in repartee, delighting in responses quicker than his own, loving the excitement of risqué raconteurs whom he would dare to go further. All of this was beyond Mo. She was the centre of Gerald’s life, but increasingly he liked to travel away from it, though ever dependent on knowing it was there to return to. His affairs with young actresses were known to her – they were known to everyone in their theatrical circle – but she seemed to cope with this knowledge by appearing to ignore it. The image of Gerald and Mo as utterly devoted was not the façade this attitude might suggest – they were devoted but sexual fidelity on Gerald’s part was not essential to the devotion. So long as Mo was not publicly humiliated, so long as she knew no other woman could ever claim a place in her husband’s heart, then she tolerated his transgressions. But to deduce from this that she was a weak character would be wrong. On the contrary, she was in her own way strong, even formidable, possessing great dignity and always impressing with the authority with which she ran her home. Gerald seemed to depend on her a great deal, especially returning late from the theatre when the two of them would sit talking while he wound down from whatever part he had been playing. Gerald was a family man, a husband and a father above all else, whatever the impression others received.

  When Angela, Daphne and Jeanne du Maurier were young they thought their father was perfect. Their childhood memories enshrined a father so caring and affectionate, so energetic and jolly, so inventive and enthusiastic and so overwhelmingly protective that they were sure there could be no other like him. The sun rose and set with Gerald – his world was made their world, a world of action, a world of living in great comfort among colourful people, a world of the theatre. Their own little nursery world on the top floor of the Cumberland Terrace house might be staid and traditional, but downstairs was the ever-thrilling presence of Gerald, who would swoop and enfold them and draw them into his own exciting existence. He played marvellous imaginative games3 with them, read to them, took them with him to the theatre, involved himself in their lives totally when he was with them, and they saw themselves blessed with such a father. As indeed, until adolescence, they were.

  In an era when fathers were by no means common in the nursery, and certainly not fun-loving figures when they did put in an appearance, Gerald du Maurier stood out. He gave time to his daughters, and saw to it that this time was rich. Above all, he spent hours talking to them, not in a patronizing way, but treating them, if not as equals, at least as people whose words were worthy of serious consideration on any topic. Gradually, as the three girls grew up, it was the talk which fascinated them most. Their mother was not part of it. She would withdraw and let Gerald and the girls converse, never quite sure what enthralled them so, though she understood the language perfectly well. This language was full of du Maurier code words, impenetrable to an outsider, code words which changed and were added to all the time and gave to any discussion a delicious sense of secrecy. To outsiders, it could sound affected and even downright silly and annoying, but just as the English upper classes of the era loved to have their own private language, which excluded anyone not belonging to the magic circle, so the du Mauriers loved having theirs. For the girls it was all an extension of the theatre: they acted in real life just as Gerald acted on stage, and the code words were like scripts which must be perfectly learned. It made them feel quite triumphant to be able to communicate in public, as well as private, in a language no one else could exactly penetrate. Some of this language was easy to understand: to refer to someone being ‘on a hard chair’ meant they were easily offended, being ‘menaced’ was being attracted by another person (and ‘a fearful menace’ was a very attractive person), while indulging in a ‘tell-him’ was to be boring. But it was harder to trace the derivation of others: ‘wain’, for example, was to be embarrassed, but nobody could remember why. Usually, some incident in family life had given rise to a code word and then the incident itself was often forgotten. It was the same with names. The girls themselves had different nicknames, religiously adhered to for a while, then suddenly changed when a better one presented itself. New people coming into the family circle were invariably given nicknames, until it seemed no one ever had their proper name or spoke in plain English.

  The girls loved it and entered into the spirit of it quite naturally. They were encouraged, even expected, to use their imaginations, to make their conversation as amusing and colourful as possible. What was rather more dangerous was the way in which they were also pulled into Gerald’s own style of mockery. Mockery was his favourite weapon and he used it mercilessly. Everything and everyone could be mocked and not to enjoy this sport was to have no sense of humour. Yet at the same time – which was confusing for children – good manners were essential. Gerald could mock someone until they seemed completely ridiculous, but should that person later appear they had to be treated with absolute respect with never a hint of what had gone before. So the children learned very early that nothing was ever what it seemed – a kind of complicated double standard was operated by their beloved father both on and off the stage.

  Gerald himself saw no contradictions in his role as father. He openly loved his daughters – he was very affectionate, carrying them round long after they had outgrown this stage, and cuddling them all in the most demonstrative way – and felt he inculcated in them the highest values and standards. The most important of values was family pride. As he grew older, Gerald loved and revered his family more and more and talked endlessly about its history, both recent and long past, to his children. In 1916, when he purchased Cannon Hall, Cannon Place in Hampstead, the return to the area where he had been born4 reinforced his passion for tales of his father, the artist and novelist George du Maurier, and every walk from their new home became for the girls a lesson in family history. Gerald was extremely proud of his father, of his ability both as an artist (he illustrated the work of Hardy and Henry James as well as being a famous Punch cartoonist) and as a writer. The three novels his father had written – Peter Ibbetson, Trilby (introducing Svengali), and The Martians – were adored by Gerald and he never tired of talking of them. The girls listened dutifully but at that stage were rather bored by all this emphasis on the past. Family meant to them, as to all children, those who were alive and who featured in their everyday existence. Grandparents came first and contrasted strongly with one another. Their paternal grandfather, about whom they heard so much, was dead, but their paternal grandmother, Emma du Maurier, was alive and a touch formidable. The girls called her ‘Big Granny’, because she was tall and majestic. They had lunch with her at her flat in Portman Mansions once a week, but, although she was always kind to them, they were in awe of her black clothes and the little lace cap on her head. Visits to her were formal and a little tense, whereas those to their maternal grandparents were quite the opposite.

  By the time Gerald had moved his family to Hampstead, the Beaumonts had also moved to nearby Golders Green, so convenient for grandchildren to visit. Daphne in particular loved to go and stay the weekend at 45 Woodstock Avenue, where everything was so humble, quite markedly different from the splendours of Cannon Hall. This was a large Queen Anne house, only a hundred yards from Hampstead Heath, with a small courtyard in front and an enormous walled garden at the back from which there were magnificent views over the whole of London. The house was imposing but not austere, pleasantly rambling in character, though rather formally decorated and furnished by Muriel. Part of the attraction of the tiny Woodstock Avenue house where Daphne’s maternal grandparents lived was its ordinariness. It was one in a row of new semi-detached houses, with the railway line running along nearby, and seemed like part of Toytown with everything on a small scale. Daphne liked, too, her grandparents’ routine, such a contrast to the excitement and glamour which so often filled Cannon Hall. Her grandfather did little except potter about and listen to the wireless while her grandmother baked and sewed and shopped in Golders Green High Street without the help of any of the servants needed to run Cannon Hall.5 Daphne liked to go shopping with her for everyday necessities and was curiously content to play on her own in the tiny back garden and sleep on a camp-bed in her Aunt Billie’s room.

  But then Daphne, alone of the three du Maurier girls, had a fascination with lives different from her own. She had a great rapport with the Cannon Hall servants and her curiosity amused them. Dorothy Sheppard, who started work as a between-maid soon after the du Mauriers bought Cannon Hall, was rather startled by Daphne’s eager interest in her. Only sixteen herself, Dorothy came straight from her home in a village near Sandringham to the imposing Hampstead house, half-terrified by the prospect. But within a week she was counting herself lucky and had decided she could not have landed anywhere better. Not only did she like all the other five servants, but she thought the family ‘lovely’, especially ten-year-old Daphne. Dorothy slept in the night nursery with Daphne and six-year-old Jeanne, and was from the first plagued with questions about her family, her home, her village, about how she felt, was she lonely? . . . Daphne could hardly wait for the light to be put out before subjecting Dorothy to an inquisition. Once Dor, as she was known, had begun walking out with Jack, the boy who brought the fish from Nockles, the questioning became more searching: did Jack hold Dor’s hand, did he kiss her, and if he did what did it feel like and what was going to happen next? This was the same child who shrank from facing visitors, who had to be persuaded to talk to them, who seemed always ill at ease in company, but then that was precisely the difference: with Dor, with her Beaumont grandparents, Daphne did not need to perform. She did not feel she was being examined and scrutinized, her remarks analysed and pronounced upon so disconcertingly. To these people she was able to be herself without worrying about being found wanting or thought curious: they sensed nothing strange about her. But to those many others who visited Cannon Hall, particularly the theatrical crowd, she did seem ‘odd’. Clever, yes. Pretty, certainly. Talented, possibly. But silent, watchful and, most peculiar of all in that household, shy.

  It was the kind of shyness most frequently misunderstood, especially by Gerald’s friends. If young Daphne had blushed and trembled and looked appealingly nervous then she would have caused no comment, but instead her shyness came out as haughtiness, her chin held aggressively in the air, her mouth set, and she would glare and toss her head with what was mistaken as defiance. Her eyes, which were a startlingly clear blue, were beautiful, but they were apt to appear hostile and when she looked away, as she frequently did through embarrassment, she could seem sly. The contrast with her sisters was marked. Angela was direct and extremely sociable, and Jeanne, the baby, although also quite shy, was used to being petted and cooed over. Taken to their father’s dressing-room at the theatre, as they so often were, Angela was in her element, Jeanne happy to accept attention, but Daphne hated it. Gerald’s dressing-room was always full, she felt, of ‘gushing fools’ whom even as a child she despised. It needed only one voice to cry ‘Oh, the darlings’ to freeze her with horror. She would be struck dumb backstage, hating the atmosphere there as much as she loved it front-of-house. She found herself suddenly clumsy, knocking things over and behaving in general like some Lower School boy.6

  She wished often that she was a boy, not only because, like so many young girls throughout the ages, she envied the greater freedom and opportunities of a boy’s life, but because she and her sisters were well aware how passionately their father had longed for a son to carry on the du Maurier name. Gerald’s obsession with family grew stronger with every year, and after his only brother, Guy, was killed in action in 1915, leaving no children, he knew he was the last of the male line.7 He did not in the least regard his daughters as being of the ‘wrong’ sex – daughters were the thing – but, like his parents, he would have liked two sons as well as three daughters. After the birth of Jeanne, his disappointment developed and, since this in no way affected his love for his girls, he was able to be perfectly open about it. All three daughters wished their beloved father could have had a son to make him happy, and Daphne wished it most of all. She was the one most like Gerald himself and could imagine herself as the boy he had been. She did not look like him, but relatives noticed not only that she walked and moved in the way Gerald did but that she shared his quick thinking. There was an empathy between the two of them which was quite unmistakable.

  This was certainly something Gerald acknowledged himself. He wrote a poem to her:8

  My very slender one

  So brave of heart, but delicate of will,

  So careful not to wound, never kill,

  My tender one –

  Who seems to live in Kingdoms all her own

  In realms of joy

  Where heroes young and old

  In climates hot and cold

  Do deeds of daring and much fame

  And she knows she could do the same

  If only she’d been born a boy.

  And sometimes in the silence of the night

  I wake and think perhaps my darling’s right

  And that she should have been,

  And, if I’d had my way,

  She would have been, a boy.

  My very slender one

  So feminine and fair, so fresh and sweet,

  So full of fun and womanly deceit.

  My tender one

  Who seems to dream her life away alone.

  A dainty girl

  But always well attired

  And loves to be admired

  Wherever she may be, and wants

  To be the being who enchants

  Because she has been born a girl.

  And sometimes in the turmoil of the day

  I pause, and think my darling may

  Be one of those who will

  For good or ill

  Remain a girl for ever and be still

  A Girl.

  It was a confused message for a girl to interpret: on the one hand her father seemed to be expressing strong regret that she was not a boy, and to be telling her she was more suited to being a boy than a girl, and on the other to be rejoicing in her femininity, so long as she never grew up. In her own mind Daphne had no doubts: everything about being a boy appealed to her more. She hated dressing as a girl while she was growing up and most of the time did not do so. She and Jeanne wore boys’ shorts and shirts and ties and thick schoolboy socks and shoes – they liked to dress exactly as boys in an era when young girls did not wear trousers. She hated having her hair put in ringlets and having it endlessly brushed and was quick to adopt a short bob as soon as she had any choice. Her alter ego, ‘Eric Avon’,9 in whom she believed implicitly, went to Rugby and was bold and fearless and did all the things she would have done if she had been a boy. In a family where flights of fancy, and fantasy, were positively encouraged, there was no objection to Daphne’s passion for all things masculine. But the truth was that even clad in the most boyish of clothes and doing the most boyish of things Daphne looked indisputably and very fetchingly feminine. She was always a little girl playing at being a boy with no confusion whatsoever possible in the eye of any beholder. It was all rather charming and nobody was disturbed, nobody realized quite how much Daphne genuinely hated being a girl.