Cornwall has captivated me ever since I read my first Daphne Du Maurier book. 

This was around the time (or maybe a bit later) when I had a magical friend called Penny who sat on the window ledge outside my bedroom and talked to me at night. She looked not unlike this early photo of du Maurier, with the addition of filmy wings. Magical friends don’t visit any more, or not of the winged kind. But magical places do still exist, and Cornwall is one. 

For me, and many booklovers, Cornwall is synonymous with Daphne du Maurier. She lived in Cornwall for almost 30 years and many of her books are set there. As a pensive, serious child of a fanciful bent who spent most of her time reading and daydreaming, I was naturally attracted to the “brooding moor” type of book, with wind-whistling, glowering empty sweeps of rain lashed heath, bleak foreboding piles, fog and shadowy characters with ulterior motives. Daphne, (not to mention the Brontë sisters) was a perfect fit for me.  It’s not hard to see that the Brontës significantly influenced du Maurier’s early writing. 

While du Maurier was a prolific writer, her best-known book was “Rebecca” which became a bestseller, has never been out of print and was adapted at various times for both the large and small screens. “Rebecca” is a Gothic romance that has it all – atmospheric manor house, sinister housekeeper, notorious ex-wife, mystery, tragedy, a haunting spirit, and an ambivalent ending. Just hearing the famous first line “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again” still brings me out in goosebumps. 

Daphne du Maurier’s first novel “The Loving Spirit“, published in 1931, when she was 24, prefigures “Rebecca” in so far as the story features tragedy, terrible accidents and dark and brooding characters.

It was inspired by a real character, Jane Slade of Polruan, who ran a shipbuilding business in the 1800s. She lent her name to a ship, the wreck of which was later discovered at Pont Pill, derelict but still retaining its figurehead, later given to du Maurier.

“The Loving Spirit” was written at Ferryside, the du Mauriers’ home in Bodinnick, Cornwall. Ferryside sits opposite the town of Fowey (pronounced “Foy”), a place so beautiful that only the words of Sea Rat in “Wind in the Willows” can do it justice: 

‘”…the little grey sea town I know so well, that clings along one steep side of the harbour. There through dark doorways you look down flights of stone steps, overhung by great pink tufts of valerian and ending in a patch of sparkling blue water. The little boats that lie tethered to the rings and stanchions of the old sea-wall are gaily painted as those I clambered in and out of in my own childhood; the salmon leap on the flood tide, schools of mackerel flash and play past quay-sides and foreshores, and by the windows the great vessels glide, night and day, up to their moorings or forth to the open sea.”

There’s a charming romantic anecdote about “The Loving Spirit” (perhaps embellished slightly by some poetic licence). Du Maurier’s husband to be Major (Tommy) Browning was sufficiently captivated by the book and the photograph of its author (possibly more so the latter) that he determined to meet her. Being of a nautical inclination, he sailed his yacht Ygdrasil back and forth in Fowey harbour beneath Ferryside’s windows in order to attract Daphne’s attention, which, not surprisingly, he did. And ultimately, they married. (The yacht and the marriage are facts, but I can’t vouch for anything else.)

Much as I loved all du Maurier’s novels, it was “The House on the Strand” published in 1965 that mesmerised me to the point of obsession, although it’s less widely read and not as critically acclaimed as some of her other works. Another Cornish novel, it’s reminiscent of something by Edgar Allen Poe. 

In case you’re tempted to read it yourself, all I’ll say is that it involves experimental drug use, time travel, (to the 14th century town of Twyardreath) and is hypnotic, addictive and utterly enthralling. Would I be so entranced I wonder if I read it again? Only one way to find out so onto the TBR pile it goes. 

Here’s a link to a BBC video of an interview with du Maurier around the time she wrote the book.

An article written by Joan Passey and published in The Conversation called “Rebecca and Beyond: the Creative Allure of Gothic Cornwall” describes Cornwall as having a “distinctive identity”. To me it’s always been a double or Janus-faced identity, where an atmosphere of myths, legends, hauntings, madness and death underlie the tourist version we know and love – of sparkling harbours where boat masts knock gently in the breeze against a backdrop of bucolic pastures patchworked with hedges and ancient stone sweeping towards the blue of a serene horizon.

Passey’s article quotes John D. Sedding, who obviously felt the same. In 1887 he wrote, “Cornwall is the nursery ground of the saints; the fabled land of Lyonesse; the home of the giants; the haunt of fairies, pixies, mermaids, demons, and spectres. To speak of its natural aspects, its wild seaboard, and frequent air of savagery, one is almost bound to use terms of fancy.”

The lighter side of Cornwall is epitomised by the television series “Doc Martin” (the location of which – Port Isaac – is the subject of the featured image of this post). What’s not to love about quirky characters, quaint villages, sea shanty singing fishermen and eternal happy endings?  More mysterious and more appealing to me is the darker side where forbiddingly glowering skies hang heavy over brooding seascapes, desolate ruins of abandoned mines dot the craggy cliffs and legends about shipwrecks, pirates, smugglers, hauntings, tragic accidents and otherworldly happenings abound. And that’s not to mention “Poldark“, a television series (based on the novels of Winston Graham) where the brooding seascapes are quite eclipsed by the brooding features of Aidan Turner.

This darker side has generated what Passey terms a “Gothic literary tradition that stretches over 222 years.” Gothic literature, for the uninitiated, includes classics such as Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula, and others. It’s described on the website Discovery, as “a genre that places strong emphasis on intense emotion, pairing terror with pleasure, death with romance [and] characterized by its darkly picturesque scenery and its eerie stories of the macabre.”

According to another article in The Conversation, written by Jessica Gildersleeve and titled “Guide to the Classics: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – Gender, Gothic Haunting and Gaslighting“, “Rebecca” is typical of a literary genre called the female gothic,  

Such works, Gildersleeve notes “derive their terror from women’s domestic entrapment and manipulation”.

Now we’d probably call it psycho-sexual abuse and while it made for a gripping story, (and still does), the Gothic embellishments of madwomen in the attic, hauntings and socially sanctioned exploitation of wives by sinister husbands aren’t so much wild fabrications as depictions of a social reality that hasn’t changed much. There’s even a new term for the phenomenon. It’s called Gaslighting (taken from the 1944 movie “Gaslight”) and is defined by Jessamy Gleeson, again in The Conversation, (an excellent publication) as “the psychological manipulation of a person in order to erode their sense of self and sanity.” To summarise it crudely, it’s an abuse of power for nefarious ends employed by the strong to manipulate the weak.  

I’ve strayed from the path of of anything remotely captivating, but sometimes shadier paths reveal some hidden gems of knowledge. 

The extent to which we’re drawn to the darker side, whether in locations, books or movies, I think, simply marks us as complex rather than anything more iniquitous. Whether or not it explains my long-ago communions with a spectral being outside the window, is probably best left unexamined.

My life-long enthrallment with Cornwall hasn’t abated, even with the intervention of an actual visit there which took place several years ago. There are some places that stay as fancies in the mind, whether visited in real life or not (Paris is another one). I’ll never forget the night we spent in the Old Ferry Inn at Fowey (old of the genuine creaking, twisting staircase kind). It’s been glammed up I notice since we were there when we had a tiny room, compensated for by the fact that the view looked straight across the water to “Ferryside”, du Maurier’s old house. And we dined that night in the pub dining room which also had a stunning view of sailing boats gently swaying in the estuary.

And while our time there is a treasured memory, Cornwall still holds for me all the elements of a recurring dream, or visits from a magical friend. It’s not so much a memory of the past as part of the eternal present.