Two by Daphne Du Maurier

Golden Lads

Daphne Du Maurier strikes again, but this time with a book of history, Golden Lads. There seems no genre in which she doesn’t excel.  The golden lads of the title are three men of the Elizabethan court—brothers Anthony and Francis Bacon and Robert “Robin” Devereux, Earl of Essex. 

The brothers Bacon are the sons of Nicholas Bacon who was Elizabeth I’s Lord Keeper of the Seal.  They are also the nephews of William Cecil, Elizabeth’s Lord Treasurer so they are eminently well-connected at court. Devereux is a soldier and on-again-off-again favorite of Elizabeth (not in romantic sense though Durant hinted at such in Vol. 7).  Just what captured Du Maurier’s imagination about this particular trio is not clear to me, but some insights are offered here. 

St. Olave's Church where Anthony Bacon is buried

The focus of the book is on Anthony who is a spy for the court and operates at a distance from it.  If I recall correctly, he never came in direct contact with the Queen.  Anthony’s is a shadowy, solitary life with charges of homosexuality, an affinity and friendship with Montaigne and important connections to Henry IV of Navarre and France.  

Francis occupies a lesser role in the book, but we see how he cajoles, calculates and cadges to be assigned a place of power in Elizabeth’s realm.  There are hints at the Francis Bacon/William Shakespeare connection. Du Maurier has an entire book on this Bacon brother, The Winding Stair:  Francis Bacon His Rise and Fall.  Who knew she had even written about him!  I tell you, her talents are legion! 

Devereux receives the least number of pages I’d say though his life was intertwined with the lives of the Bacons in ways that I can’t neatly summarize here.  I do admit that some of the historical details blew by me.  

This is not a casual book.  Chapter by chapter sources are listed, a lot of them correspondence and official papers in addition to books of both history and literature.  Du Maurier’s research is impressive.  She informs the reader that Anthony Bacon’s letters are housed at Lambeth Palace Library and “over three hundred original letters in the collection were transcribed for me,….”  I recommend this book for its microcosmic look at the Elizabethan era.  There are pictures.  The church in the picture posted at left has significance in the book. 

 The House on the Strand

In The House on the Strand, we return to fiction, fiction that melds into history and borders on fantasy that is.  When I read the dust jacket-flap summary, a man experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, I glanced at the publication date, 1969, and thought, Oh no, has even the grande dame succumbed to writing about hippies, acid heads and addicts?  I was slow to pick up the book after that, but glad I did.  Mrs. Du Maurier had done nothing of the sort.  

This is one of the oddest, largely unbelievable yet nonetheless captivating stories I’ve ever read.  A normal man on vacation with his wife in Cornwall is the guinea pig for a drug that his friend is concocting, a drug that tampers with memory and the brain. The action see-saws between the normal man on vacation in Cornwall and that same man stumbling about that same area of Cornwall in the 14th century.  I kid you not.  I do not normally like books of this sort, almost a sci-fi feel, but Du Maurier has worked her magic. While this book is certainly not about hippies or acid-heads, there is something of the addict here, but I shan't say more.  Do read this book.