Picture it. England, the countryside, a dark and stormy night.
There we were, a winter-clad group of writers and publicists, driven by motorcoach deep into the forest…
to…
http://www.handpicked.co.uk/rhinefieldhouse/RhineFieldHouse.php
Now picture the picture you’ve just seen - at night. Dark, rainy, misty, muted lights in the windows, enormous, skull-crushing chandeliers behind those great windows in the center of the photograph. A fireplace big enough to roast Henry VIII. And his wives. At once.
It’s the dining hall and we are here at Rhinefield House for dinner, a chance to get away from ship for a while. (By the way, find the history of Rhinefield on the site, if you can, especially the part about the original family planning to have four girls, designing the house for them - and then having but one, deadbeat son.)
I know I digress. I’ll get back to the ship in a minute.
This evening was too much, especially when the bus driver apparently took the bus and himself to dinner and left us. And we sat there, alone, late into the evening, waiting, wondering which rooms we might get should we be abandoned in the storm…
And whether Mrs. Danvers was still alive up there, somewhere. Lighting fires.
"Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again. We can never go back to Manderley again, that much is certain. But sometimes in my dreams I do go back."
Thank you young Mrs. DeWinter, for that tremendous opening line, and Maxim, Mrs. Danvers, Alfred Hitchcock and of course author Daphne du Maurier, of "Rebecca."
This is living!
(Yes, we eventually were fetched by the sated bus driver and driven away from the bug-eyed insanity of the suddenly and silently THERE Mrs. D.)
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