Lot 1146 , Du Maurier, Daphne (1907-1989) British Author - a collection of five typescript letters to Foy Felicia Quiller-Couch (1899-1986)

° Du Maurier, Daphne (1907-1989) British Author - a collection of five typescript letters to Foy Felicia Quiller-Couch (1899-1986) - comprising:- on Menabilly headed notepaper, dated September 5th 1955, refers to a proposed trip to France with her sister Jeanne, to an area where their glass-blowing ancestors lived, 2pp, signed; on Menabilly headed notepaper, dated December 7 [1956?], mentions preparations for Christmas and a hilarious visit from the new Vicar of Fowey, ‘’I think he had heard I was agnostic and had closed down Tregaminnion chapel (!) but my dear so unfortunate, his arrival clashed with the railway bringing parcels of wine from London for Christmas, and bless me if his departure did not stumble up against yet another van-load of liquor from Colliers of Plymouth, men in aprons staggering into the hall with crates of beer!’’, 2pp, signed; from Menabilly, dated 3rd September, 1965, refers to visits, that have or are about to take place, from family and friends, including Maureen Baker-Munton (1922-2013), Staff Officer and later PA to Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Browning and family friend to the du Maurier Browning family, who is about to stay with her husband Monty and their new baby, 2 pp. signed; from Menabilly, dated February 28th 1966, relating to correspondence the she has exchanged with a local politician [Peter Bessel, MP for Bodmin 1964-1970] and the lease on The Haven, 2pp, signed; from Kilmarth, dated December 5th 1970, refers to Clara Vyvyan’s illness, news about Aunt Billy, Cousin Dora, Miss Wilcox, Miss Tod and others, together with her plans for Christmas, 4pp, signed; from Kilmarth, dated June 11th 1980, manuscript letter to a Mr Stanley Jones, who has asked about the number of books she has written, 2pp, signed, also an enclosed signed photograph, also signed and inscribed verso; two postcards of the author’s parents - Mr Gerald du Maurier in a play ‘’What Every Woman Knows’’, c.1909 and Muriel Beaumont [Mrs Gerald du Maurier], post mark 1907, together with a theatre programme from The Princes Theatre, London, dated 1933, for the play ‘Diplomacy’ by Victorien Sardou, produced by and starring Gerald du Maurier,

NOTE
In the biography by Margaret Forster - Daphne du Maurier, Chatto and Windus, 1993, she writes of their friendship: 'Foy was eight years older than Daphne and led the life of a Victorian daughter at the Haven, very much under her father's influence, which was rather repressive. But behind the dutifulness, Foy was an independent spirit and Daphne quickly came to appreciate her finer points... Soon she was thinking of Foy and Clara Vyvyan [with whom Foy lived at Trelowarren] as her two closest friends... The three women were all slightly unusual, not to say eccentric, in appearance, with Daphne in her (for the times) daring red slacks, Foy in a jumble of old clothes, and the much older Clara in the inevitable beret over hair she had never cut in her life' (p. 70).
£400-700