The House on the Strand

"The House on the Strand" is a novel by Daphne du Maurier. First published in 1969 by Victor Gollancz it is one of her later works.

Like many of du Maurier's novels, "The House on the Strand" has a supernatural element. It is concerned with the ability to mentally travel back in time and experience historical events at first hand - but not to influence them.

It is set in and around Kilmarth (where Daphne du Maurier lived from 1967) near the Cornish village of Tywardreath, which in fact translates from the Cornish language as "House on the Strand".

Plot summary

The narrator, Dick Young, has been offered the use of Kilmarth, the house of his biophysicist friend Magnus Lane, in Cornwall. He also agrees to act as a guinea-pig for a drug Magnus has developed.

On taking it for the first time, he finds that it enables him to enter into the landscape around him as it was during the early 14th century. He becomes drawn into the lives of the people he sees there, particularly Lady Isolda Carminowe, and he is soon addicted to the experience.

Within the landscape Dick is compelled to follow Roger, steward to Sir Henry Champernoune, Lord of the Manor. Roger hides his enduring love for Isolda until the day he dies, and Dick comes to share this love.

Each visit corresponds to a key moment in the story of Isolda and Roger. Each time Dick returns to the real time he is more confused; throughout the experience he is unable to interact with Roger or Isolda. Any attempt to do so brings Dick crashing back to the present in a state of nauseous exhaustion.

The drug has other dangers in that following Roger means that Dick walks unaware through the modern landscape with all the danger that entails.

His wife and step-sons join him in Cornwall and are worried by his bizarre behaviour. It is made clear that Dick does not truly love his wife, and certainly does not want to act as father to her sons - which makes plausible his increasing desire to escape into the past.

His friend Magnus intends to join Dick but before he does so is killed in what seems like a bizarre accident or suicide - struck by a train whilst straying on to the local railway track. Dick knows the truth, that Magnus was under the influence of the drug; this makes the inquest difficult.

Dick's last visit to the 14th century culminates in Roger confessing his love and the fact that he ensured that Isolda died pleasantly rather than succumb to a worse fate. Roger dies and Dick wakes but finds the drug has had serious incapacitating consequences for his health.

Since Roger (his doppelganger/receptor) is dead, Dick is left with no route back to the other world and so in a subtle sense he has died there too.

External links

* [http://www.dumaurier.org/strand.html The House on the Strand]