Sherry Chandler

Those among us who may have sighed over Maxim de Winter, especially as embodied by Laurence Olivier (that’s Lord Olivier, I know), will be interested to know that May 10 is Daphne du Maurier’s centenary and the Brits are planning great celebrations.

As for Manderley, as in “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” it apparently had its origins in a real dwelling:

Manderley was partly inspired by a real house in Cornwall, Menabilly. Du Maurier fell in love with it and wrote about it before she ever lived there (uninhabited, its windows blinded by ivy, she saw it as ‘asleep’, waiting for her). A photograph shows Menabilly as unexpectedly plain, with an unreadable facade. Like Manderley, it was hidden in woods and could not be seen from the shore. Pleasingly, du Maurier was able to rent it partly through the proceeds of Rebecca: Manderley paid for Menabilly. Du Maurier never owned the house. It was like an illicit affair - hers, yet not hers. She once said, ‘Houses are not like marriages … one cannot just walk out and leave them.’ According to Margaret Forster, Menabilly was ’secretive - and Daphne loved secrets’.

H/T to Poppysmatus.

December 31 [1975]

…I woke this morning in tears, thinking about a TV film I had to stop looking at because it was so painful, a stab to the heart, as I saw Japanese murdering hundreds of porpoises…as we too are doing every day in the tuna nets…the terrible image of man at his most cruel and devastating, his ability to rid the universe of one marvellous creation after another. Porpoises, so gentle, the friends of man! There are times when it seems unbearable to be part of this horrible race, mankind, the destroyers, the murderers of everything gentle and helpless. That is what we are. And, in the end, of course, the self-destroyers.

— May Sarton, The House by the Sea: A Journal (Norton, 1977)

What struck me about this passage is that it was written in 1975, and while we’ve done some stuff to help the porpoises, its general condemnation of man the destroyer is still all too relevant.

Here’s an interesting and related story from today’s Washington Post: Military Sharpens Focus on Climate Change. Now it’s a national security threat. We have to protect what we have against those who are going to be hit hardest.

Also relevant, a reader has pointed me to a theory about our disappearing bees:

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

I’m not ready to buy this yet. Other reports I’ve heard say that dead bees left behind in the hives have a multitude of diseases, as though something is interfering with their immune systems.

Whatever it is, it’s frightening. As are reports that we have now developed a strain of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.