As a girl, I remember being given a number of Daphne du Maurier’s books and enjoying them immensely – particularly Rebecca and The Scapegoat. There were adaptations of her novels and stories that appeared on TV – I’ve seen several versions of Rebecca, and then there was Hitchcock’s The Birds. I read her darker, spookier short stories too. She always struck me as a master storyteller and remarkably original for her time.
Elisabeth Gifford explores what made du Maurier tick in her new novel The Mischief Makers – how she got her inspiration as well as her family life, before and after marriage. It also describes the encouragement she got from J M Barrie, her Uncle Jim, the author of Peter Pan and guardian to her five cousins, the Llewelyn Davies boys.
I’m not sure how Elisabeth Gifford managed to write such a nicely concise and well put together story because there must have been such a lot left on the cutting room floor. The du Mauriers and J M Barrie are all such fascinating people. As a young girl Daphne was often at the theatre, her father, Gerald du Maurier, one of the outstanding theatre actors of his time. It was during a run of Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton that her parents had met, her mother starring opposite Gerald. Daphne’s grandfather was the author of Trilby and creator of the character Svengali, the evil mesmerist whose name lives on.
But one by one they have grown too old for tales of Peter Pan. Now Uncle Jim can also be found sitting with Daphne and Angela in the nursery, perched like a crumpled bird on the fender, mesmerising them with secret islands, prompting them as they swoop from chair to chair or swim like mermaids across the carpet. All night long Daphne continues to swim and fly through the night in her sleep. And it becomes clear to her that she has a secret only Jim knows: she may look like her sisters but really she is one of the boy cousins whom she has long idolised, longed to be there with them when the stories were first told in Black Lake Woods. She is part of Jim’s little gang, living on the edge of magic and adventure. She is really a wild boy, dancing at the edge of Neverland, thumbing her nose at the rest of the dull old world.
Daphne married Major Frederick (Tommy) Browning, himself an interesting man, a career soldier who set up the first British Airborne Division that was instrumental in the defeat of Germany during WWII. Knighted for his war work, Daphne became known as Lady Browning, although the strain the war put on their marriage was one they struggled to recover from. And of course Daphne’s immersion into her work as a writer, her determination to live quietly in Cornwall, which at times cut herself off from her husband, even, at times, her children.
But it’s the stories of her cousins, the Davies boys, and their recollections of their guardian that is really interesting. Peter as an older man is constantly engrossed in letters and memorabilia, trying to make sense of his childhood, whether or not they were simply used by Barrie, and the tragic death of his brother Michael as a young man. Was Barrie somehow at fault?
Daphne sees similarities between Barrie and herself, as writers stepping into imaginary worlds, discovering their characters in the people they meet, as well as in themselves. She even seems to feel Rebecca watching her, a somewhat disturbing presence. This insight into the mind of Daphne the writer is illuminating and fascinating. You also get a strong sense of what people went through in the last century with two world wars, and the social changes that followed, as seen through Daphne’s eyes.
The Mischief Makers is quite a tour de force, a brilliant read, particularly for a life-long Daphne du Maurier fan like me. The writing is pared back and straight-forward, mostly written from inside Daphne’s head, but with some extra chapters slipped in from earlier family experiences, the results of Peter’s research. It all comes together to create an overall picture of a very complex woman and her world. I wonder if we’ll see the book among those long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year. It’s a five-star read from me.
Judith McKinnon 