Daphne du Maurier's Cornwall

I have cited Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) twice in recent blog posts. Firstly du Maurier was the cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who served as JM Barrie's inspiration for the characters in the play Peter Pan. Secondly Justine Picardie is the author of four books, including the book on the Ritz Hotel that I reviewed; her most recent novel was about Daphne du Maurier.

Now I want to concentrate on Daphne du Maurier in her own landscape. She was born in London to an artistic, theatrical and literary family. I have no doubt that her close family members helped her in estab­lish­ing her literary career, but if she had stayed in London for the rest of her life, her novels and plays would have looked very different.

Of her c25 novels, short story collections and plays written between 1930 and 1980, I have only read a handful Jamaica Inn (1936), Rebecca (1938) and My Cousin Rachel (1951) so I will be particularly influenced by Jessica Tooze’s analysis of the books I have NOT read .

Ferryside, Fowey

bought by the du Maurier family in 1926

It is said about many authors that their ability to recreate a sense of place is an important part of their writing. Nowhere is that more meaningful than in Du Maurier’s writing where places were as important as people; her places could be considered characters in their own right.

Du Maurier was a young woman of 19 when she visited Cornwall for the first time and fell in love with the sea, boats, cliffs, harbours, inns and cottages. She learned to sail and fish with the best of them! And except for a few invol­un­t­ary moves (eg during war time), she never wanted to live anywhere else. She died in 1989, in Cornwall.

Set in an area of natural maritime beauty, Du Maurier settled in the town of Fowey (called Foy) which lies along the estuary fac­ing a deep water harbour. The old town has old Geor­gian and Victorian buildings, but it was a cliff side cottage that captured her attention. Promptly named Ferryside in 1926, the cottage was her centre of peace and magic as she wandered around the Cornish countryside.

I have seen Menabilly i.e Manderley from Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca. The grey stone Georgian mansion hidden behind trees was memorable, but it was the long track down to the sea through “tumbled woods, trailing ivy and tangled undergrowth” that captured her imag­ination! The track was indeed dark, but hardly menacing.

Boats on the River Fowey

Perhaps the menacing aspect came from Du Maurier’s knowledge about ship­wrecks along the coast. Or from her knowledge of smuggling. One day she was riding on Bodmin Moor near Fowey and lost in a thick fog, she came across the Jamaica Inn Temperance Hotel. This hotel had been a stop for stage and mail coaches en route to London. Her novel Jamaica Inn (1936) captured the forbidding bleakness of the moor, allegedly one of the most haunted places for smugglers and travellers in the entire country.

Du Maurier's novels were never really Romances since there were few happy endings. And critics have suggested that even her own brand of Romanticism sat incongruously with her books’ moodiness and sinister overtones.

In her short stor­ies, she wrote even less romantically! In fact she used horror as the main theme eg The Birds, Don't Look Now, The Apple Tree and The Blue Lenses.

Sometimes the stories were set in the same geographic area, but in different centuries. The King's General (1946), for example, was set in the two English Civil Wars. The novel Mary Anne (1954) was the story of her great-great-grandmother Mary Anne Clarke; from 1803-1808, Mary Anne had been the mistress of Frederick Aug­us­tus Duke of York, a son of King George III. The Glass-Blowers (1963) traced the du Maurier family’s very real French ancestry. The book gave a colourful description of the French Revolution, before the family moved from France to England.

My Cousin Rachel is full of recognisable Cornwall. Today visitors are invited to go on a My Cousin Rachel Walk that tours the Barton land near Fowey and explores the region, just as the characters in the book did. The long walk affords amazing coastal views, the farmyards, Tregaminion Chapel, Menabilly, Polridmouth and St Catherine's Castle.

the old coaching house, Jamaica Inn

Needless to say, Fowey has thanked its most famous resident at the town’s Literary Centre. Visitors can examine the small exhibition and the film about Daphne du Maurier’s life, and come to their own conclusions about how her novels were shaped by this part of Cornwall.