Daphne Du Maurier by Margaret Forster

Author:Margaret Forster [Forster, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Literary, Literary Criticism, General
ISBN: 9781446455609
Google: yZ3hQPo0bAgC
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-10-30T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

SEPTEMBER TIDE RAN in London until the beginning of August 1949, giving Daphne ample opportunity to get to know Gertie better and to become as infatuated with her as she was with Ellen, though in a quite different way. If part of the attraction Ellen held for her was to do with wishing she were her daughter (though a daughter who would have liked an intimate relationship of another kind), part of the attraction Gertie exerted was to do with Daphne wanting to be her mother. From the moment Gertie had arrived to begin rehearsing the play the previous September, Daphne had fussed and fretted over her health and welfare in a thoroughly maternal way. She worried in her letters to Evie Williams, Gertie’s English secretary, about the star being tired, having a cold and not being cosseted enough. She continued to do a great deal of cosseting herself, endlessly arranging cars for Gertie when the management would not, and seeing that all the tributes to stardom Gertie had been used to – flowers in her dressing-room, flowers in her hotel bedroom, champagne after the show – went on being readily available. She saw that, whatever her outward demeanour, Gertie lacked confidence and needed constant reassurance, which it became Daphne’s role to give her.

But there was more to Daphne’s obsession with Gertrude Lawrence than merely being attracted to her exuberant personality or wanting to take care of her. Watching her play Stella, hearing her speak the lines written for Stella with Ellen in mind, many of them poignant and emotional because of Daphne’s feelings for Ellen, was a deeply unsettling experience. Daphne stressed again and again to Ellen how unlike her Gertie was, so much so that at first she found it almost offensive that Gertie should attempt, in the guise of Stella, to play Ellen at all. But as rehearsals went on, Gertie began sometimes to catch the spirit of the part, and then Daphne felt confused and disturbed. A dangerous transition seemed to be taking place – Gertie, on stage, could become Ellen for minutes at a time. Daphne found herself staring at a fantasy love-affair on stage which she had created, and the actress embodying her fantasy became confused with the woman who had inspired the role. Inwardly, Daphne was moved by Gertie on stage while outwardly, off stage, she went on telling Evie Williams she simply wanted to look after her.

It was a role which she assumed at first with some amusement, constantly remarking in her letters to Ellen that she could see right through Gertie. She knew perfectly well that the star gave ‘everyone hell’ backstage, but ‘cooed like a dove’ should Daphne come to see her in the play. Then her acting was impeccable, but when the author was not present it disintegrated sometimes into near farce or went over the top into melodramatic tragedy. Daphne decided that Gertie was ‘fundamentally lonely’ and by no means as happily married as she professed. She also thought Gertie would ‘never be adult, which is why I find her so fascinating’.

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