Phillip and Ambrose had a good thing going: Phillip was largely raised by his older cousin, a man with twenty years on him and a tremendous unease around women that he passed on to his ward. They lived in Ambrose’ country estate in Cornwall, staffed only by men, and Ambrose took a particular delight in inviting guests to put their boots up on the table if they’d like: there were no wives or maids to fuss here! Then Ambrose, wintering in Italy, wrote with news: he’d met an Englishwoman in Florence from their own country, and she shared his passion for gardens! — and, they were to be married. The old bachelor had at last struck his colors. As a year without Ambrose passes, Phillip begins worrying about the future of their bachelor’s mess, but then receives a series of increasingly disturbing letters that force him to travel to Italy himself. There he learns, to his dismay, that Ambrose is dead — but Phillip suspects that something rotten has been going on in the state of Florence. He returns home, despondent and suspicious, but then is surprised to learn that his cousin’s widow is coming to see him. With suspicion in his heart, he waits for her like a hunter in a blind — but it is he who is struck, by Cupid.

My Cousin Rachel drew me in almost immediately with its air of malice and mystery, flecked with humor: I don’t think I’ve ever read a classic that captivated me so quickly. In this, du Maurier accomplishes doing to the reader what Phillip’s cousin Rachel did to Ambrose — and then to him. Her depiction of their banter and growing affection struck me as perfect, a happy drifting into a serious bond — and yet this is not merrie tale of love and happiness wrested from death. It’s extremely Gothic in terms of setting and the air of menace, mystery, and wonder that hangs over the text regardless of setting. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything that hit that quality more, despite reading classic gothic tales like Frankenstein and Greg Iles’ southern gothic novels. One character uses the word enchantment, and it’s extremely apt — his cousin Rachel simply has that effect, but enchantments can go either way, as C.S. Lewis reminded us. Part of the fun of reading this is the delicious tension in the mystery, and the reader’s growing conviction that something is awry, but the inability to get off the primrose path.

This was delicious, and I plan on returning to du Maurier again with Rebecca as soon as I’ve gotten a term paper out of the way.

Quotations

The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.

There is no going back in life. There is no return. No second chance. I cannot call back the spoken word or the accomplished deed, sitting here, alive and in my own home, anymore than poor Tom Jenkyn could, swinging in his chains.

“I never thought,” said my godfather slowly, “to see you grow so hard. What has happened to you?”
“Nothing has happened to me,” I said, “save that, like a young warhorse, I smell blood. Have you forgotten my father was a soldier?”

A halo can be a lovely thing, providing you can take it off, now and again, and become human.

“Really, cousin Rachel, you might protect me. Why not tell these gossips I’m a recluse and spend all my spare time scribbling Latin verses? That might shake them.”
“Nothing will shake them,” she answered. “The thought that a good-looking young bachelor should like solitude and verse would make you sound all the more romantic. These things whet appetite.”

“If it’s warmth and comfort that a man wants, and something beautiful to look upon, he can get all that from his own house, if he loves it well.” To my astonishment she laughed so much at my remark that Tamlyn and the gardeners, working at the far end of the plantation, raised their heads to look at us.
“One day,” she said to me, “when you fall in love, I shall remind you of those words. Warmth and comfort from stone walls, at twenty-four. Oh, Philip!” And the bubble of laughter came from her again.

When the men brought the new lead piping to be placed against the walls, to serve as guttering from the roof to the ground, and the bucket heads were in position, I had a strange feeling of pride as I looked up at the little plaque beneath them stamped with my initials P. A and the date beneath, and lower down the lion that was my mother’s crest. It was as though I gave something of myself into the future.