The King’s General, published in 1946, was the eighth of Daphne du Maurier’s 15 novels and the fifth set in Cornwall where she made her home. The mid-17th century story is woven around real characters, real places and well-researched, real events of the English Civil War.
The story’s narrator, Honor Harris, describes the twists and turns of her life from an idyllic childhood in the Looe Valley, through the trauma of the war years until in middle age she makes her final home in the village of Tywardreath. It was a life dominated by a fascination and infatuation with the character of the book’s title, Richard Grenvile, a heroic but flawed soldier and adventurer who looms darkly over the entire story.
Richard Grenvile, the King’s General in the West
Honor first encounters Richard Grenvile at the age of ten when he visits her modest farm. She is smart and feisty, he is arrogant and demanding, from a wealthier family and ten years her senior. Yet somehow they fall for each other and by the time of her eighteenth birthday are set to marry.
But tragedy intervenes and there is no marriage. Instead, the book charts a decades-long on-and-off relationship between two strong and complex characters, creating arguably more depth to the novel than there is in some of Du Maurier’s better known works, while the compelling, believable story line, largely based on actual historical events, draws the reader in and keeps the pages turning.
Much of the drama takes place in and around the house of Menabilly near the town of Fowey, which became Du Maurier’s home. Du Maurier got the idea of the story from an incident at the house in 1820, when the owner discovered the body of a young civil war victim hidden inside the walls.
Du Maurier Country
Menabilly is at the heart of what has become known as “Du Maurier Country.” Nearby are the beach at Pridmouth (Polridmouth), the little harbour at Polkerris and further west the village of Tywardreath all of which feature in this and other Du Maurier novels. But the action of The King’s General extends throughout Cornwall and into neighbouring Devon, and provides a fine basis for a modern literary tour of one of England’s most beautiful counties.
Honor originally lived at Lanrest, now a stone-built farmhouse above the East Looe river. The young Richard Grenvile lived at Killigarth, a manor house above Polperro that is now a holiday park. The King’s temporary headquarters were on the huge Boconnoc estate, the location of a modern, annual programme of cultural events. One of the story’s Parliamentarians owned Lanhydrock, a superb country house with extensive grounds now owned by the National Trust.
Richard Grenvile was briefly imprisoned in the castle that still dominates the town of Launceston. And Honor stayed for a while at Penryn, negotiating with Royalist forces making their last stand inside the still imposing Pendennis Castle.
The story is set firmly within the realms of the landed classes. Fishermen, farmers and the staff of the estates are peripheral except for Matty, the narrator’s lifelong servant. But the Cornish character of the book is more developed than in, for example, Frenchman’s Creek or Jamaica Inn. Du Maurier includes her usual evocative accounts of the landscape and weather, and nicely describes the connection that the adult narrator feels with the few square miles around her childhood home.
A Cornish Identity
The Civil War setting provides a canvas for Cornwall’s cultural and political identity, an identity that was reflected in Du Maurier’s own later life. Seventeenth century Cornwall was solidly Royalist and she presents the Parliamentarians who eventually invaded and occupied the county as grim, humourless foreigners intent on stamping their authority on the independent-minded Cornish people.
While The King’s General contains all the familiar elements of a Du Maurier novel, and more, this is one of her least read works. In mid-2008 it has an undeservedly low Amazon sales rank of 134,000, compared to 600 for her most popular book, Rebecca, and of below 10,000 for four of her other Cornish novels.
The real Honor Harris died while still relatively young, and a plaque in Tywardreath church commemorates her life. Was it, in du Maurier’s version, a life of tragedy and loss, or of quiet heroism and ultimately of fulfilment? Readers may come down on either side of that argument, and therein lies the plausible beauty of the story. It reveals Du Maurier at her best, whatever the judgement of Amazon’s sales ranks.
Daphne du Maurier, The King’s General, Virago Press, 2004, ISBN-10: 1844080897
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