Chapter by Chapter: My Cousin Rachel; Chapter Two

Cover art: My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne du Maurier

My Cousin Rachel, Chapter Two:

My Cousin Ambrose.

First sentence: I had no sense of foreboding when we sat talking together that last evening, before Ambrose set out on his final journey.

I admit that I laughed out loud when I read that first sentence, because how could I not? If Philip hasn’t picked up on the Foreboding Overtones yet, he’s in for a world of hurt. (Or, well, I assume he is??? Also, HIS FINAL JOURNEY is Very Portentous.)

Anyway, we hear a little bit about his life with Ambrose—how he fired a nurse when Philip was three after he discovered her spanking him with a hairbrush, how he taught him his alphabet by using curse words (which makes very little sense to me because a) what curse word starts with ‘x’ and b) what would swears even mean to this extremely sheltered kid, but as usual I’m getting off-track here)—and a whole lot about how Ambrose Doesn’t Like Women.

More on that in a moment, but first, a breathless recap of the chapter:

For the last few years, Ambrose has gone abroad during the winter due to his failing health! Before Ambrose jets off to The Continent, Philip doesn’t have Foreboding Feelings, but Ambrose clearly does, as he spends a lot of time looking meditatively out the window at the rain and saying things about The Future but clearly it is A Future Without Him In It! That gives Philip The Sads, but still no Foreboding Feelings! Ambrose writes from Italy to tell him all about meeting Their Long-Lost Cousin Rachel, who is Not Like Other Women! Then he writes to Philip again to tell him that he and Rachel are now MARRIED! This gives Philip a double case of The Sads so he sits and stares at the calm ocean because that’s what you do when you’re a depressed 23-year-old rich kid who lives in Cornwall!

A few choice examples of Ambrose’s feelings about The Ladies:

• “Although invariably courteous, he was shy of women, and mistrustful too, saying they made mischief in a household.”

• “And now sit back in your chairs and be comfortable, gentlemen. As there is no woman in the house, we can put our boots on the table and spit on the carpet.” (<—Ambrose is joking here, in that he’s not actually suggesting that everyone start spitting on the floor, but he’s saying it to wind up the new vicar, who is “henpecked” and has a bunch of daughters, which is apparently The Worst Fate To Befall A Man.)

• Ambrose, in a letter to Philip, shortly after meeting Rachel: “Can’t hear enough about home and all I have to tell her. She is extremely intelligent but, thank the Lord, knows when to hold her tongue. None of that endless yammering so common in women.”

• From another letter—in which he informs Philip that he and Rachel are now MARRIED: “Why she has chosen me of all men, a crusty, cynical woman hater if ever there was one, I cannot say. She teases me about it, and I admit defeat. To be defeated by someone like herself is, in a sense, a victory. I might call myself victor, not vanquished, if it were not so damnably conceited a statement.“ (I admit that Ambrose largely won me over at this point, mostly because I am a sucker for self-deprecation.)

Last sentence: I had just turned twenty-three, and yet I felt as lonely and as lost as I had done years before, sitting on a bench in Fourth Form at Harrow, with no one to befriend me and nothing before me, only a new world of strange experience that I did not want.

POOR PHILIP!!!