Manderley has become mistress of Manderley, senses an atmosphere of doom about it, due to the death of Max's first wife (the titular Rebecca), and it is hinted that she haunts the estate. Childhood visits to Milton Hall, Cambridgeshire, home of the Fitzwilliam family, influenced the descriptions of Manderley, especially the interior. She told the 10th Earl Fitzwilliam in a letter that when she wrote "Rebecca" 20 years later, the interior of Manderley was based on her recollection of the rooms and 'big house feel' of Milton in the First World War. The adult du Maurier's Cornish home near Fowey, called
Gerald du Maurier Camber's Ladies" (1932), a German doctor in "I Was a Spy" (1933), the emperor's valet in "Catherine the Great" (1934) and, soon before his final illness, Wessensee in the Michael Balcon version of "Jew Süss" (1934). Du Maurier was a regular cigarette smoker, and the du Maurier brand was named after him as a paid endorsement deal (he did not smoke them himself), to which he agreed to help pay taxes owed. He served as President of the Actors' Orphanage Fund (now the Actors' Charitable Trust) from 1914 to his death, when he was succeeded by Noël Coward. He died