Chapter by Chapter: My Cousin Rachel; Chapter Four
My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne du Maurier
My Cousin Rachel, Chapter Four: AMBROSE IS DEAD!!
First sentence: When the conveyance brought me and the other passengers to Florence and dumped us down at the hostelry beside the Arno, I felt I had been a lifetime upon the road.
Recap: Unsurprisingly, Philip is NOT a great traveler—these are not the best of circumstances, but it seems safe to say that he’d be a twerp even if he was traveling for pleasure.
He gets to Italy, looks down his nose at everything and everyone, feels that everything is dirty and loud and hot and oppressive, and misses the quiet and cool calm of being a Rich Cornwall Hermit.
He hires a carriage—called a carrozza, which is also a delicious-looking sandwich—and gets to the villa where Ambrose had been staying.
The language barrier stymies him for a bit, but eventually he learns that—cue dramatic music—AMBROSE DIED THREE WEEKS AGO!
AND THEN RACHEL PACKED UP AND LEFT!
THE SERVANTS DON’T KNOW IF SHE’S EVEN COMING BACK!!!
The servants show him around the villa, paying particular attention to the spaces that Ambrose was the most fond of; they show him the room Ambrose died in, and give him some details about his death: fever, weakness, stomach pains, violent outbursts, coma, death.
The servant, Giuseppe, refers a few times to a Signor Rainaldi, who was around A Lot—he takes care of Rachel’s business arrangements and he’s known her a long, long, long time. (<—👀👀👀)
Philip gets Rainaldi’s address, so we have that meeting to look forward to!
Giuseppe tells Philip where Ambrose is buried—in the Protestant cemetery in Florence—and that all of Ambrose’s personal effects are gone, packed up and with Rachel… except for one of Ambrose’s hats, which he gives to Philip.
Notes:
• I know I mocked Philip a bit for being such a pill of a traveler, but to be fair, he’s quite self-aware about it. He explicitly says that if circumstances were different, he might have enjoyed himself, but: “As it was, I looked upon what I saw with indifference, passing to hostility.”
• It’s clear that some degree of Philip’s discomfort is about being in a city. All of his descriptions of town are negative and claustrophobic and alien—some of that is surely due to the Rich White Guy expectation that the whole world should conform to his ideals, but some of it is connected to his preference for quiet, open spaces—and during his carriage ride to the villa, you can almost feel him getting lighter and more comfortable as his surroundings turn from brown and parched to more green and verdant.
• His discomfort with women continues! The servant who met him at the door is a woman—we never learn her name, because why would we—and even though her only crimes appear to be not speaking English and having a toothache, when Giuseppe comes to talk to Philip, he describes him as “…a better type than the woman, cleaner, with honest eyes…”
• I know I’ve been knocking Philip quite a lot, but there are some passages here that make it clear how much this loss has affected him, both at the moment, and still, at the time he’s writing this—Ambrose wasn’t just his cousin, he was basically his father.
• The time at the villa is mostly quiet, but there are discordant, stressful sounds—a barking dog, a crying child—that amp up the tension in the atmosphere.
• Giuseppe’s description of Ambrose’s pre-illness life with Rachel sounds… pretty nice? Lots of romance-y hanging on the terrace in the evening, sitting by a fountain during the day, being surrounded by gardens.
• Ambrose’s illness involved multiple violent attacks and a lot of stomach pain, which could be so many things… INCLUDING POISON!! (Philip hasn’t gone anywhere near that idea, I’m just a monster.)
Last sentence: I could feel their anxious eyes upon me, waiting for me to say something as I turned the hat over and over in my hands.
