Daphne (31 page)

Newlay Grove,
Horsforth,
Leeds
Telephone: 2615 Horsforth

5th May 1960

Dear Miss du Maurier,

I am sure you will be sorry to hear that my dear husband has passed away. His funeral took place a fortnight ago. I am sorry not to have
written
sooner, but the shock has been terrible, and I am packing up our house, which has had to be sold, and I am to move to a very much smaller house, quite close to this one.

Sadly, my husband died just a few days before the typescript of your book reached him in the post, so he did not have a chance to read it, nor did he see your kind dedication of the book to him. He would have so appreciated it, and to have known that it was his life-long interest in Branwell Brontë that stimulated your own, and encouraged you to undertake your recent biography of Branwell.

While I was going through my husband's study, I came across this package, which he had addressed to you, but not yet posted. I am therefore sending it on to you, and hope you will find the contents interesting

Yours very sincerely,

Beatrice Symington

THE YORKSHIRE POST
PO Box No. 168
Leeds 1
Telephone: 32701 (22 lines)

1st June 1960

Dear Miss du Maurier,

Thank you very much for your letter, and for sending me a draft copy of your forthcoming book,
The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë.

I
have just finished reading it, and find it uncommonly good. The suggestion that Branwell had to leave Thorp Green because he had a bad influence on the boy has never appeared in print before, so far as I remember, but this possibility that the tutor was thought to be a dangerous influence on the child's mind and morals had long ago occurred to both Mrs Weir (my colleague at the
Yorkshire Post
and the Brontë Society) and myself. These are dark depths, and we cannot be sure of ever throwing strong light at what happened at Thorp Green and other places in Branwell Brontë's story.

Now to the other matter that you raised in your letter, a memorial fund for the late Mr Symington. I can understand your distress on receiving Mrs Symington's letter, and appreciate your sympathetic thoughts, as well as your observations about Mr Symington's considerable contribution to Brontë scholarship. But there is clearly much that you do not know about Mr Symington and his former relations with the Brontë Society and the University of Leeds. It is a sad and disturbing story, which is best kept confidential. I can rely on your discretion, I am sure, but you should be aware that in view of the trouble we had in our dealings with Mr Symington, it is most improbable that members of the Brontë Society would wish to contribute to the memorial fund you have in mind. At one time the Society was faced by the very disagreeable prospect of taking legal proceedings against Mr Symington. You will realise from this that the trouble was very serious. The less said about it the better, but Mr Symington was far from trustworthy in his dealings.

I notice from the bibliography of your excellent book that you purchased a number of Brontë manuscripts from Mr Symington. It is, I am sorry to say, entirely possible that the items sold to you by him may have come from the Parsonage Museum or the Brotherton Collection. He was forced to leave his post as librarian and curator to the Parsonage after various key items were found to be missing from the collection. Mr Symington subsequently left the Leeds University Library staff after it had been discovered that he took some of the manuscripts that the University considered its own. His explanation was that Lord Brotherton had told him that he could help himself to anything he wanted from the contents of the Brotherton Library, but he never produced any documentary support of this claim.

A very brief notice of Mr Symington's death was reported in the
Yorkshire Post
but there were evidently no tributes from the University or any members of the Brontë Society.

Yours sincerely
Linton Andrews

Menabilly, June 1960

The darkness was dwindling now, the days lengthening toward midsummer, and Daphne listened to her grandchildren's voices calling out to each other across the lawn in front of Menabilly, where the long grass had just been mown. A blackbird sang in the chestnut tree, and the light was clear; the dust washed away by last night's rain. Tommy was outside with the grandchildren, rounding them up for a game of cricket; his face was less haggard, his hands less shaky than earlier this year. As Daphne looked out at him, through the open windows of the Long Room, she felt a rush of tenderness, seeing him take his granddaughter's hand, then limping slightly while he walked alongside her. She remembered the long-ago days when he had played on the lawn with their children, before the years had overtaken them; yet on a June morning such as this one, the past seemed to offer some promise of hope to the future.

Daphne had already replied to Beatrice Symington's letter, as soon as she received it last month, sending her heartfelt condolences, and expressing her admiration for Mr Symington, her sorrow that he had not lived to see the book that she had dedicated to him, and her thanks for the contents of the parcel. Immediately afterwards, she had written to Sir Linton Andrews, suggesting that a memorial of some kind be made in honour of Symington's unflagging work on behalf of Branwell Brontë. But Sir Linton's response was profoundly disturbing, as she read it through for the first time at her desk now. Of course, she noted his initial description of her biography as 'uncommonly good', which was encouraging, and went some way to allay her creeping fears that rather than resuscitating Branwell, she had killed him off, somehow smothering him within the pages of her biography; though she had not spoken of her anxiety about the forthcoming publication to anyone, feeling it to be dishonourable and selfish in the wake of Peter's death, which must take precedence over her own, more trivial worries about reviews and sales.

And at first, she thought Sir Linton was being particularly complimentary about her theory concerning Branwell's dismissal as tutor from the Robinson household; but a few seconds afterwards, on re-reading the relevant passage in his letter, she wondered if he might in fact be quietly reminding her that she was no closer to reaching the real truth about Branwell than anyone else had been.

His comments on Mr Symington, however, were forthright and to the point, and as soon as she reached this part of his letter, Daphne began to feel alarmed and angry and foolish and ashamed. How could she not have realised that Symington was quite such a slippery character? It wasn't just that odd encounter when she'd visited his house last winter, but also his evasiveness about spending time in the Parsonage library on her behalf. In fact, realised Daphne with a sinking heart, it might very well have been on his eventual trips to the Parsonage last year that he had pilfered more manuscripts, spurred on by her demands for fresh material.

And yet, she could not bring herself to condemn him altogether, for he had certainly not made himself rich on the proceeds of his obsessive collecting. When she had telephoned Symington's widow last month, soon after receiving the news of his death from pneumonia, it had become abundantly clear that the poor woman was left penniless; hence the sale of the house, and the brief report in the local paper that Mr Symington's estate had amounted to just over £400.

Still, it was also becoming evident to Daphne - even without Sir Linton's delicately phrased hints - that the manuscripts she had bought from Symington must now be donated to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, along with the two items sent to her in the parcel last month by Mrs Symington, which she picked up again now, and turned over in her hands. Daphne would be sad to lose these: the first a slim morocco leather-bound volume, containing the fragmentary drafts of a poem that T. J. Wise had attributed to Emily Brontë, and presumably sold as such, and yet which was clearly in Branwell's handwriting. Daphne liked the poem, even though it was obviously unfinished, and had copied it out in her own handwriting, and pinned it to the wall of her writing hut, where she glanced at the first stanza again:

She was also admiring of Mr Symington's perspicacity in recognising the handwriting as Branwell's - which he had pointed out to her in one of two notes tucked into the package posted by his widow (albeit written in the shakiest hand himself) - and also in identifying the poem as having been written on the back of Branwell's torn-up draft of a letter of application to study art at the Royal Academy. That Branwell had never become an art student - indeed, might never have posted his letter of application - seemed to Daphne to be a failure that was reflected again in Mr Symington's own failings. He had never written his book about Branwell Brontë; he had never proved that T. J. Wise had forged Charlotte Brontë's signature on Branwell's childhood chronicles of Angria, or Emily's signature on Branwell's poetry; he had not even posted this letter, or the accompanying package, to Daphne; perhaps he had thought better of giving her either a gift of the manuscripts, or the insights in his letter. It had been left to his widow to do so, but that had been a matter of chance; she might very well have overlooked the package, in the stress of moving and sorting through his ramshackle library and study.

And whatever Mr Symington's intentions, his motives were difficult to fathom in the second handwritten note, which seemed to be less immediately relevant to the morocco leather-bound volume, or indeed to the question of Branwell Brontë. Daphne picked up this note, and looked at it again. On it, Mr Symington had written, "'Self-Interrogation": do with this what you will.' Presumably, his message concerned the other item in the parcel from Mrs Symington: a small, mildewed leather notebook, whose contents had been destroyed by rampant damp and mould. Daphne had, at first, intended to include this enigmatic note, and the ravaged notebook, in her package to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, with the morocco volume and the manuscripts of Branwell's poems and letters that she had previously purchased from Mr Symington.

At the last minute, however, she took out the little notebook, and Symington's one-line note to her. There could be no harm in keeping this back, when everything else was being returned to the Parsonage, to be examined and catalogued and exhibited to the world. But this: this belonged with Daphne, here in Menabilly; a wordless book in the wordless woods. Let it rest safely here with her, along with the others, the secrets and the ghosts.

Daphne stood up, put her head back, and stretched her arms, so that her fingertips reached the ceiling. Then she walked out of the writing hut, out of its shadows and into the sunlight, and the day was so bright, her eyes were dazzled, and as she stepped forward, she could not yet see what lay before her.

DAPHNE DU MAURIER FAMILY TREE

* Gerald du Maurier was friends with J.M. Barrie and played Captain Hook and Mr Darling in the first and subsequent productions of
Peter Pan.

• Angela du Maurier, Daphne's older sister, played Wendy in a later production of
Peter Pan

◊ When the five Llewelyn Davies brothers - the inspiration for
Peter Pan
- were orphaned in 1910, they were adopted by J.M. Barrie.

Although this book is fiction, it is based on a true story. Like the contemporary narrator of my novel, I became utterly possessed by the story, and obsessed by the paper trail of Brontë manuscripts and what passed between Daphne du Maurier and John Alexander Symington; like her, I burrowed through the catacombs of library archives and second-hand bookshops to discover lost or forgotten letters; like her, I was born in Bay Tree Lodge in Hampstead, around the corner from the du Maurier and Llewelyn Davies family graves in Church Row, and Daphne's childhood home in Cannon Hall.

But unlike my narrator, I was fortunate enough to receive a great deal of help from the du Maurier family in researching this novel. I am grateful to Daphne's son and daughter-in-law, Christian and Hacker Browning, for their patience and good humour in the face of my questions, for their generosity in allowing me to see Ferryside and their hospitality whenever I came to Fowey. Daphne du Maurier's daughters, Lady Tessa Montgomery and Lady Flavia Leng, were similarly helpful, and provided a huge amount of insight and information, as did her grandson, Rupert Tower. I am also indebted to Henrietta Llewelyn Davies, great-granddaughter of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and great niece of Peter Llewelyn Davies, for her wise and perceptive advice.

Further insights into Daphne's story came from her friends, Oriel Malet and Maureen Baker-Munton (formerly Tommy Browning's secretary). Daphne's oldest friend, Mary Fox, who knew her from childhood, was kind enough to share her memories with me, as did Mary's sister, Pam Michael, and their nephew, Robert Fox, who visited Menabilly as a child.

Ann Dinsdale, Collections Manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, has been unfailingly helpful and knowledgeable in her responses to my queries, as has Andrew McCarthy, deputy director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, along with the rest of the staff there. I would also like to thank the Brontë Society, in particular its president, Rebecca Fraser.

Finally, thanks are due to my rigorous yet patient editors, Alexandra Pringle and Gillian Stern; my agent Ed Victor, along with his colleagues, Grainne Fox and Linda Van; Polly Samson, O1 Parker and Maggie O'Farrell, for their suggestions and incisive comments; my sons Jamie and Tom, who braved the Cornish winter and Menabilly ghosts with me; my husband, Neill MacColl, whose encouragement and support was entirely unlike the narrator's husband, even when I was at my most obsessive; and my mother, Hilary Britten, who kept me from giving up or going under.