The Loving Spirit

Daphne du Maurier's THE LOVING SPIRIT (1931) may well be the finest first novel that I have ever read. And Daphne was only 22 when she finished it in Bodinnick-by-Fowey, Cornwall, England in January 1930! ***The novel's dominant theme is this: if an ancestor or ancestress cares enough for her genetic downline, even a hundred years later, he/she will find a way to reach a great granddaughter and nephew, show them love, protect, communicate with and be seen or sensed by them. *** We know that Ms du Maurier read Sir Walter Scott and her novel's viewpoint is practically the same as that which Sir Walter embodied in his two novels of Scotland during the Reformation: THE MONASTERY and THE ABBOT (1820). Both Scott and du Maurier show a mysterious, loving guardian spirit protecting a family down the generations through literal wreckage: the destruction of a Scottish Benedictine monastery in Scott's novels and the wreck of the merchant sailing vessel The Janet Coombe in du Maurier's THE LOVING SPIRIT. Both Scott and du Maurier based their novels on real historical events and persons. *** Daphne du Maurier's THE LOVING SPIRIT tells the story of the intertwined lives of a large Cornwall England family from 1830 - 1930. It contains four "Books" entitled in sequence Janet Coombe (1830 - 1863), Joseph Coombe (1863 - 1900) , Christopher Coombe (1888 - 1912) and Jennifer Coombe (1912 - 1930). *** Janet Coombe is "the loving spirit" whom nothing can prevent from watching over her favorite -- not far from incestuously so -- but deeply troubled sea captain son Joseph; his sometimes cowardly, but in the end heroically self-sacrificing son Christopher; and Christopher's youngest child Jennifer. *** By novel's end Jennifer has married and had a son Bill by John Stevens. The couple are third cousins, great grandchildren of Janet Coombe. The "unloving spirit" of this four (or five if we include young Bill Stevens) generation saga is Janet Coombe's youngest never married son Philip Coombe (born 1859), great uncle of Jennifer Coombe and John Stevens, who loves only himself, lives to pile up his money and finds steady joy in doing harm to his kinsmen. He dies spectacularly mad in the novel's last few pages. *** Other elements of THE LOVING SPIRIT derive from Daphne du Maurier's own intense young life, beginning with her love of wild, rugged Cornwall, the sea and boats, her sense that families live on in spirit for generations in their ancestral homes, proceeding through du Mauriet's fascination with incest as a natural human inclination, her belief in the struggle of two souls within every human body, her love of the gothic in literature, her willingness to think outside the box of traditional Christianity, a flirtatious romance since age 14 with an older twice married actor cousin and more. *** Be it known that a real life Cornish seagoing family of the renamed fictional seaside village of Plyn, known personally to du Maurier, had a history much like that of the Coombes, with an ancestress for whom an ultimately wrecked sailing vessel was named, whose likeness was carved into a wooden figurehead for the ship, a figurehead that came into possession of Daphne herself. *** At novel's end in 1930 young mother Jennifer Coombe Stevens , image of her greatgrandmother Janet Coombe at the same age, is looking at the detached figurehead of The Janet Coombe, now mounted outside son Bill's nursery. "She leans beyond them all, a little white figure with her hands at her breast, her chin in the air, her eyes gazing towards the sea. High above the clustered houses and the grey harbour waters of Plyn, the loving spirit smiles and is free." These are the last words of Daphne du Maurier's grand first novel THE LOVING SPIRIT. -OOO-