Daphne du Maurier 2 – The Birds Traditional Cache
Daphne du Maurier 2 – The Birds
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
The cache is situated about 1km. from the suggested parking along a
public footpath which can get very muddy. Dogs are allowed but, as
the path runs through a farm, should be kept on a lead.
Daphne du Maurier (Lady Daphne Browning)(1907-89) is one of the
most celebrated and best-loved British authors of the 20th Century.
She was a resident of Fowey for many years and this is one of an
occasional series of caches set to celebrate her life and work.
This cache is also set to coincide with the du Maurier Festival,
held each May in and around Fowey. Many of Daphne’s
outstanding novels and short stories were turned into films, such
as ‘Rebecca’, ‘Jamaica Inn’, ‘My
Cousin Rachel’, 'The Birds' and ‘Don’t Look
Now’. Perhaps the best known of these films is Alfred
Hitchcock's 1963 thriller 'The Birds'. This year (2007) is the
centenary of Daphne's birth and this cache was set on the day of
her centenary!
Daphne was inspired to write the story when, whilst walking from
Menabilly House to Menabilly Barton farm, she saw Tommy Dunn, the
farmer at Menabilly Barton, ploughing the fields and being followed
by a flock of birds (seagulls) looking for the worms exposed by the
plough. When you visit the cache, you will walk past the farm and
may be lucky enough to see a similar sight with Richard Dunn,
Tommy’s son, who now farms Menabilly Barton.
The story was first published in a collection of short stories
“The Apple Tree” in 1952 and soon became one of
Daphne’s most celebrated works. Covering a few days in the
life of a family living on the Cornish coast, it examines what
would happen if animals, traditionally regarded as a symbol of
peace and freedom, were to turn and start attacking humans. The
story opens in the middle of the night when Nat Hocken (a farm
worker) wakes to an insistant tapping at his window. The tension
and horror increases as Nat’s family suffer a series of
vicious attacks by flocks of birds, seemingly bent on destruction.
Eleven years after it’s publication the story was made into a
film by Alfred Hitchcock (The Birds 1963). Further reading can be
found here.
Daphne du Maurier was disappointed with Alfred Hitchcock's
adaptation of her story. She was baffled as to why the great
director had distorted it as he had. The difference between the
story and the film is striking, though less in the depiction of the
birds' inexplicably aggressive behaviour than in the characters who
confront it, and where it all happens. Nat Hocken, and his struggle
to protect his family from the birds is set against a wild Cornish
coastline where gales sweep across stark hills and fields and
isolated farmhouses. The combination of bleak landscape and rustic
characters lends an appropriately elemental tone to the tale, and
this is missing from Hitchcock's version, with its placid northern
California setting and the urbane city folk he casts as his
protagonists.
A sad footnote - Tommy Dunn, the inspiration for the story died
aged 85 on 8th May 2010, just before the Du Maurier Festival 2010,
at which a local group performed the first ever stage version of
the story.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Bcra gur tngr naq vg'f oruvaq vg!