We hope the example of Daphne's family will encourage you to post on this webpage your favourite lines other than the universally well-loved opening to Rebecca. Perhaps you'll be inspired to re-read her books and discover other lines with a special meaning for you.

Virago Press has published almost thirty of Daphne's books in paperback with a delightful hardback edition of Vanishing Cornwall. These have introductions by established authors, some of whom have presented at our Festival and submitted their own favourite lines below.

If you have already REGISTERED as a Member, please use the SUBMIT form to send your favourite lines to us, where they will be reviewed by Ann Willmore.

"Your Favourite Lines" is based on an original idea by Collin Langley.

Tim Heald
The Parasites

'But why, Pappy? We're only going for a night.'
'When I pack,' said Pappy, 'I pack for all eternity.'
The Parasites, Ch.16, p.203, Virago (2005).

I adore 'Pappy', who is presumably Gerald du Maurier. He is a man after my own heart – a roguish, drunken hypochondriac. I love him, he always expects disaster, especially when packing.

Tim Heald is a popular writer and journalist, he lives in Fowey. AW.

Collin Langley
The Parasites

Niall looked across the table at Maria. She was no longer Mary Rose, she was no longer anyone. She was the little girl who, nearly thirty years before, had stood at the back of the stalls and watched Mama upon the stage. She had watched Mama, and then turned to the mirrors on the wall, and the gestures that she copied were borrowed, not her own; the hands were the hands of another, so was the smile, so were the dancing feet. The eyes were the eyes of a child who lived in a world of fantasy, of masks, and faces, and scarlet hanging curtains; a child who when she was shown real life became bewildered, frightened, lost.
'No,' said Maria, 'No…'
She got up, and stood looking at Charles, with her hands clasped. The part of an injured wife was one she had never played.
The Parasites, Ch.22, p.296/7, Virago (2005).

This was the moment when the long-suffering Charles finally tells his self-centered wife Maria that he wants a divorce. The preceding metaphor (p.295) Charles uses, Maria having sucked 'the last of that orange' is tinged with du Maurier humour which of course permeates the book.
Maria immediately goes into child mode beautifully illustrated by Daphne's reference to the figure of a little girl. When I first read this passage I accepted this description without further thought. Later, whilst researching Daphne's musical tastes and their influence on her writing, I heard Daphne on BBC Radio's Desert Island Discs choosing eight records to take to the mythical island. Record number four was Ravel's Pavane pour une Infante Défunte. Daphne told BBC's Roy Plomley that this music evoked a painting by Velásquez, of 'a little infanta with her hands cupped as though she was dancing, I think she was Phillip 4th's daughter.' The picture re-emerges in The Parasites even down to the scarlet curtains.
The 17C Velázquez portrait of the Infanta Magarita, age 5, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarita_Teresa_of_Spain .
Curiously, the Pavane also features throughout a film of Rebecca.
Collin Langley.

Ella Westland
The Parasites

Maria shook her head.
'He doesn't really love me,' she said: 'he only loves the idea he once had of me. … The whole thing was an illusion.'
And even now, she thought, gazing into the fire, as I say these things to Niall and Celia, who understand, I'm still acting. I'm looking at myself, I'm seeing a person called Maria lying on a sofa and losing the love of her husband, and I'm sad for that poor, lonely soul, I want to weep for her; but me, the real me, is making faces in the corner.
The Parasites, Ch.3, p.23/4,Virago (2005).

Acting ran deep in the du Maurier psyche. Actors – like writers - are held to be highly empathetic and creative, yet they must also possess a steely propensity for dispassionate observation. What Maria knows is that such a gift comes at a cost, especially when she turns herself and those close to her into the objects of her attention. Maria's insight into the private life of an artist in this passage brings us close, I feel, to the author of the novel. Had I been given a opportunity to meet Daphne du Maurier, who died a few months before I moved to Cornwall, I would have expected to find her outwardly poised and polite, while remaining coolly aware of her own performance, inwardly 'making faces in the corner'. Ella Westland.
Ella Westland is the author of Reading Daphne, Truran (2007). CL.

Festivalgoer
The Parasites

Someone from a newspaper had telephoned him the other day. 'Mr Delaney, we are running a series shortly in our paper, “What Success has done for Me.” Can we have your contribution?' No, they could not have his contribution. All success had done for him was to make it impossible to pay his super-tax. 'But what is your recipe, Mr Delaney, for the short road to success?' Mr Delaney had no recipe.

Success. Well, what did it mean, to him? Supposing he had answered the newspaper and spoken the truth? A song burning in his head for two days until he had written it down, when he was purged; when he was free again. Until the next pain came. And the performance was repeated. The disillusion came when the songs were plugged upon the air, moaned by crooners, whispered by wailing women, clanged by orchestras, hummed by housemaids; so that what had been once his little private pain became, to put it bluntly, everyone's diarrhoea. Which was cheapening and intolerable. Negroes offered thousands for the rights to sing his songs. God! The cheques that had rolled in from coloured crooners. Too many cheques, all in one year. Niall had to attend conferences in the City with hard-faced men round desks, all because of some little song that had come into his head one afternoon, when lying on his back in the sun. How to escape? Travel. He could always travel.
The Parasites, Ch.19, p.259/260, Virago (2005).

With the three main characters, Maria, Niall and Celia each facets of Daphne, the autobiographic influences have always fascinated me. More evidence of the light and shade in her writing, here we glimpse Daphne's wonderful humour alongside more solemn reflections. The less palatable price of fame is portrayed, doubtless based on personal experience. Daphne's own intolerable tax situation; (£22,500 on an income of £25,000 in 1942-enough to buy a Lancaster bomber! she once observed: Daphne du Maurier by Margaret Forster, Ch.11, p. 173/4, Arrow (2007). What better example of HMG's most parasitic agency, a cruel irony in Daphne's case. And then the unrelenting public acclaim. Oh dear Daphne! But at least you were spared the worst excesses of paparazzi! Festivalgoer.

Government records show maximum UK marginal rates of income tax and super-tax in 1948 of 97.5%. If this wasn't bad enough, up to a further 50% special contribution could be levied on investment income. This puts Daphne's constant monetary concerns into perspective! CL.

Daphne du Maurier fan
The Parasites

'The thing is,' she said, 'people always think I'm ethereal. Wide-eyed and wan. I wonder why.'
'Perhaps you don't lie about with them like this,' said Niall.
'I do lie about,' she said, 'from time to time. The trouble is I go off everyone so quickly. I soon get bored.'
'Bored with the things they say? Or with the things they do?'
'With the things they do. I never listen to the things they say.'
Niall lit a cigarette. No easy matter, in his cramped position.
'It's like music,' he said. 'After all, there are only eight notes to an octave.'
'What about all those sharps and flats?'
'Well, you can play about with them,' he said.
'Think of Elgar,' she said, 'Enigma Variations. And Rachmaninoff, having fun with Paganini.'
'You set too high a standard,' said Niall. 'You must depress your friends.'
The Parasites, Ch.14, p.176, Virago (2005).

In The Du Mauriers Daphne wrote 'The du Mauriers have streaks in common…They laugh immoderately…their sense of humour is apt to be warped and tinged with satire.' Ch.17, p.310/1, Virago (2004).
I love these lines from The Parasites since they illustrate Daphne's sense of humour. The book was purportedly the nearest she came to self-analysis, with its three leading characters reflections of herself.
She wrote to Oriel Malet 9 March, 1956 that '…Niall was much more a facet of myself.' Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship, p.63, Orion Books (1994).
Rachmaninoff's 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (18th var.) was one of Daphne's favourite pieces of music that she played at night in Menabilly during the War. A Daphne du Maurier fan.

Ann Willmore
The Parasites

The wind, if anything, had lightened; the sea was slaty smooth. There was no steamer smoke now on the horizon, and no sign of any ship. The land lay astern, about seven miles distant. Even the gull had gone. Niall sat down in the cockpit once again and watched the water rising on the cabin floor.
His first reaction was relief to be alone. He had not the responsibility of a second person. But swiftly upon this thought came a feeling of melancholy, of sadness. It would have been nice, at such a moment, to talk aloud. Someone like Charles would have been invaluable. Men who have fought in wars, who ran estates, who were efficient, would be sure to know how to cope with a leaking boat…Niall did not know how to do any of these things. He only knew how to write songs.
The Parasites, Ch.25, p.335/336, Virago (2005).


The Parasites is my favourite of all Daphne du Maurier's novels and this paragraph, very close to the end of the book, when we don't know what will happen to Niall, is key as he finally realises the value of Charles and his own limitations. Ann Willmore.