Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier
Posted in Other fiction, Reading Reviewed at 12:00 on 17 December 2024
In Four Great Cornish Novels, Gollancz, 1984, 185 p. (Frenchman’s Creek first published in 1941.)
Tired of life in London, and perhaps of the reputation she had acquired after accompanying her husband Sir Harry to insalubrious hostelries, Dona, Lady St Columb, has repaired post-haste to Navron, their house in Cornwall, with the couple’s two children. There, the enigmatic servant William tries to make her life comfortable but there is something odd about the contents of her dressing table.
We sense plot afoot when the local bigwig, Lord Godolphin, calls to warn her of a French pirate ship which has been raiding ships in the area, that its crew takes liberties with women of the district and that she might be advised to be wary. Dona’s response to this information, hinting to Godolphin that those women might not take amiss to such attentions, seems a little forward for her times but it is already established that she is of an independent mind.
Naturally she soon stumbles upon that French ship in a creek on her land, is captured and taken aboard. Its captain, when she is brought to him, is more preoccupied with making a drawing of a bird. When their conversation starts he treats her with courtesy and a friendship begins to burgeon between them. He is – or was till he took up piracy – Jean-Benoit Aubéry, and the ship is La Mouette. He had also slept in her bed at Navron (William is in reality his servant) and gazed on the portrait of her that hung on the wall.
Frenchman’s Creek is a peculiar mixture of the period novel and the swashbuckler. Dona pretends to take to her bed in order to undertake a voyage with La Mouette, and on board dresses as a cabin boy. It is a freedom she relishes.
In one of her conversations with the pirate (the name Aubéry is not utilized at all much) he contrasts their abilities, “‘Women make babies. That is a greater achievement than the making of a drawing, or the planning of an action.’”
It is not to last, the idyll is brought to an end when Sir Harry returns from London unexpectedly. There is still plot to be had though, and dangerous stratagems to deploy. This entertaining novel isn’t what you might call great literature but neither is it a potboiler.
After reading three of du Maurier’s “four great Cornish novels” of this volume I discern a pattern. In each, someone, a young(ish) woman comes from elsewhere to a house – or inn – in Cornwall and comes upon a secret. In this one the woman is not quite so young and not so naïve and exerts agency to a greater degree.
Pedant’s corner:- Naxron (elsewhere Navron,) “in expressibly shocked” (inexpressibly,) “because he had bid them to do so” (bade them – bade was used later – or, bidden them,) “closed the grill” (the grille.)
