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. The US edition was published by Doubleday.
Like many of du Maurier's novels, The House on the Strand has a supernatural element (though in this case, it can also be accounted as science fiction). 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".
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 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, Vita, and stepsons 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 onto the local railway track. Dick knows the truth, that Magnus was under the influence of the drug; this makes the inquest difficult.
Dick's second to last trip ends with him attempting to attack a woman named Lady Joanna in the 14th century, but in reality attacking Vita. She and her children hide from him and he contacts a doctor who helps to wean him from his addiction to the drug. Dick explains the power of the drug and the doctor has the drug analysed and reveals its extremely dangerous nature to Dick. However his addiction is such that he takes the last remaining dose soon after.
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. Since both Roger (his doppelganger/receptor) and Isolda are dead, Dick has little incentive to return to the other world, but in any case there is no drug left to ease his passage there. As the book closes Dick attempts to pick up the phone but suddenly finds he is unable to grip it.
The ending is ambiguous: is Dick dead, paralysed or simply collapsing? Daphne du Maurier said of it: "What about the hero of The House on the Strand? What did it mean when he dropped the telephone at the end of the book? I don’t really know, but I rather think he was going to be paralysed for life. Don’t you?"
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