The House on the Strand – Daphne Du Maurier (1969)

The kind of book review that I sometimes find the hardest to write is the review of a book that I loved as much as I did this one. This was a book I wanted to carry around with me hugging it to my chest – like a child with a new favourite toy. I wanted to read and read and never have it end. Daphne Du Maurier is that kind of writer – she grabs your attention in those first few sentences and doesn’t let go. I remember that feeling well from when I read Rebecca, Jamaica Inn and My Cousin Rachel – reading Daphne Du Maurier can be drug like which is appropriate when it comes to The House on the Strand.

Probably one of the reasons I hadn’t read this before is because I knew it concerned time-travel and that rather put me off. Ha, it’s a funny old thing this reading malarkey – no time-travel novels ever before – then two in one month. Anyway, I really shouldn’t have been put off – this is time travel Du Maurier style. In this novel Du Maurier blends the past and present beautifully – we become aware of how landscape may change over centuries – yet the basic shape of the land on which we live is essentially unchanged. Houses, whole communities may come and go but the curve of a hill, the sweep of a bay is much the same. We walk in the footsteps of others – those who came before us and who we will never know. I always adored history – and once upon a time I read a lot more historical fiction than I do now. In this novel Daphne Du Maurier celebrates the Cornwall of her present and our collective past – the sense of place is strong, her love of this land palpable.

“The world of today asleep, and my world not awakened, or not as yet, until the drug possessed me.”

Dick Young has been loaned an old house in Cornwall for the summer. Kilmarth belongs to Dick’s friend Professor Magnus Lane. The Professor let’s Dick into a secret – he has been experimenting with a new drug, a drug that will take the user a world away from any problems they may have. Magnus offers Dick the chance to be his guinea-pig – the drug is stored in three bottles in Magnus’s basement laboratory at Kilmarth – Magnus gives Dick his instructions over the phone – and Dick takes his first dose. The drug will take Dick back to the fourteenth century – to the world of Roger Kylmerth steward to Sir Henry Champernoune.

“The first thing I noticed was the clarity of the air, and then the sharp green colour of the land. There was no softness anywhere. The distant hills did not blend into the sky but stood out like rocks, so close that I could almost touch them, their proximity giving me the shock of surprise and wonder which a child feels looking for the first time through a telescope. Nearer to me, too each object had the same hard quality, the very grass turning to single blades, springing from a younger, harsher soil than the soil I knew.”

It’s a world of danger, disease and intrigue, where young monk connives with the lady of the house to bring an end to one thought to be dying. Where allegiances change and adultery can lead to death. With Roger as his unknowing guide – Dick witnesses whispered intrigues, adultery and murder. He is unable to interact with this world – he is an invisible witness – should Dick attempt to touch anyone from the fourteenth century he is brought crashing back to the present, suffering violent nausea, vertigo and confusion.

While Dick’s conscious mind is in the past – his body remains in his own time – so as Dick follows Roger across the Cornish landscape of the past – he could unwittingly be walking under a car in his own time. Dick is aware of the dangers – and is yet to discover whether Magnus’s drug will have any lasting effect upon his mind or body – but it is too late – Dick has been captivated by the past. After just one visit – Dick is longing to return – and keen to ring up Magnus and share his experiences with the only person in the world he can.

In the present time – Dick is waiting for the arrival of his American wife Vita, and her two sons from a previous marriage. He loves Vita and has a good relationship with his step-sons who simply adore him – but Dick is immediately set on preventing Vita arriving too early – he wants a few days to himself to continue his adventures.

It’s not long before he takes another dose of Magnus’s drug. Sometimes the aftereffects are almost non-existent, at other times violent and distressing, Dick has no wish for Vita to see him like that. However, Vita is not easily put off – and arrives two days earlier than expected. The two boys are never happier than when out and about – especially when enjoying boat trips organised by their step-father. Vita is not so easily placated – and senses almost immediately that something is wrong – she is inclined to blame Magnus – who she has never really liked. Vita is anxious to persuade Dick to move permanently to the States, to accept the job she has arranged through friends. Weary after years in a job in London he has tired of, Dick is not ready to make any big decisions.

“I realized at that moment, more strongly than hitherto, how fantastic, even macabre, was my presence amongst them, unseen, unborn, a freak in time, witness to events that had happened centuries past, unremembered, unrecorded; and I wondered how it was that standing here on the steps, watching yet invisible, I could so feel myself involved, troubled, by these loves and deaths.”

Dick gets drawn further and further into the world of fourteenth century Cornwall – taking more and more trips – captivated to the point of obsession by the beautiful, fragile Isolde. As the trips into the past continue and increase, Dick becomes less present in the modern world – everything he is doing is hidden from Vita – and Dick is withdrawing more and more from family life.

The House on the Strand is wonderfully compelling, Du Maurier’s fourteenth century world is a real and credible place – the inhabitants of which become every bit as fascinating to the reader as they are to Dick Young.