Archive for Book Review – Page 4

17 Jul

Forward Article

 

About a year ago I was sent a copy of a rare piece of Elizabeth’s writing, by an American University Librarian called Anne Salter. As with all deceased writers there is something doubly precious in finding a new piece of unknown writing, the chances to have them “speak” to you being limited. This piece was even more unique as it was about her Father, and had been commissioned for the forward of his book “Glorying In The Cross” an academic work on Christian life and worship. It gives a rare insight into one of Elizabeth’s most important and intensely personal relationships.

The forward is biographical, charting the growth of her father, physically, mentally, and spiritually starting with his early years and the strict home life that he grew up in, I can’t grace the time with the title childhood. It reminds one that the perceived romantic notion of childhood, is a recent, middle-class idyll, and certainly wasn’t the common experience of most people in the past.

He was born into a London family on 21st December, 1866, he was a delicate child, two of his older brothers had died in infancy, and it was several years before a sister was added to the family group. They moved from North London to the healthier surroundings of Blackheath, high above the roar and pollution of fast developing London. His father worked for the Bank of England, and his Mother was an invalid who suffered all her life with asthma. They were deeply, strictly religious Protestant Evangelicals, “every thing that was fun was wrong” (Goudge 1940 p11) yet her father developed a sense of humour, she believes in self-defence. He also managed to cultivate a love of the theatre and cricket, a game he could actually see being played from his window. Although his asthma stopped him from participating in the games he loved, it doesn’t occur to anyone that he had a long arduous trek across the heath each day to school and back, no matter the weather, and endured the usual bullying that all public schools seem to subject their boys to, under the impression that it will, presumably, inure them to life’s hard knocks. Luckily for him it seems he was clever enough to graduate quickly and escape the situation.

His religion was the standard he set himself throughout his life, and he was always open to questions and answers to test his faith, stretching the limits of his knowledge and experience so that he could make up his own mind, come to his own conclusions, measured by the yard stick of the teachings of Christ.  This was very different from the rigid teachings of his up bringing. One story serves to illustrate the frustrations he put his family through on his journey. He saved up his modest pocket money and bought a Catholic missal, so that he could learn how they worshipped the better to understand their point of view. When it was discovered in his bedroom, it caused a family furore and his father was “very seriously displeased.” Even more so as Henry continued to say that he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about, wasn’t in the least sorry and had found the missal “interesting.”

His father could feel pride in his clever accomplished son, but there was no true connection between them. Apart from his family, his father’s only interests were banking and gardening and Henry could feel no enthusiasm for either subject.

The other larger shadow that looms over his childhood was the debilitating nature of his Mother’s illness. He was her favoured nurse and companion; a little selfishly it seems to me, as it distressed him to see her suffering. It almost seems that he took on part of the parental role that his father was not able to do. I see shades of Lucilla relationship with James echoed here. His Mother died while he was studying at Oxford. “He often used to say in after years that it was nonsense to speak of youth as the time of happiness. He never knew real happiness until he had left his youth behind him.” (Goudge. 1940 p14.)

“The restrictions of his boyhood and his father’s criticism bred in him shyness and a self-distrust that he never quite lost.” (Goudge 1940 p14} How ripe he must have been then to fall under the spell of Elizabeth’s Mother intelligent, beautiful, a career woman self confident and strong. She loved the out door life and had been allowed an unusual amount of personal freedom by her unconventional Mother. A bitter blow on the surface then when a bicycle accident made an invalid out of her too, although from Elizabeth’s first hand account we know that the marriage was a love affair of great strength and longevity.

The article charts his progress through the church and all the prominent positions he held, with their inherent responsibilities and financial commitments. But the aspect that shines through is the great personal love that he gave to all that the came into contact with. All his former pupils, he taught at many theological colleges, all the sick and lonely parishioners he visited and the great men that he worked for and with all speak of his nature, “to see at a glance the spirit of Christ wherever it was to be found.” (Goudge 1940 p 16) Professor de Burgh said of him; “he was an anima naturaliter Christiana, something that sprang from constant communion with a supernatural spring of joy and hope. and that reflected the light that was its source.”

Such a person must have been demanding as well as wonderful to live with. One of the household servants was once heard to say “It won’t be the Canon’s fault if we aren’t good, I’m sure he tries hard enough to make us what we did ought to be.” (Goudge 1940 p 22) a quote concerning the ritual of daily prayers he led the household in.

But the most exciting comments are the ones which show the likenesses between Elizabeth and her father, he was a role model for her in every sense; she too strived to live the integrated Christian life, but there are other striking parallels throughout ; they both had Mothers who were invalids and dominated their home lives, they were both shy and felt that they lacked the social graces, Elizabeth famously having to come to terms with this aspect when the family lived in Oxford and Mrs Goudge suffered a nervous breakdown, their love of animals, especially dogs, their fondness for country churches and the simple services in them, the theatre, Henry read plays as recreation, and Elizabeth wrote her most famous lead David into the glamour and success of the profession and they both enjoyed correspondence, writing letters to hundreds of people over their lifetimes, neither of them employing a secretary to do so.

There are other deeper similarities too. Henry instilled in Elizabeth the ethic of doing things for the greater good of the family/community and finding a lasting happiness that way. Their views on religion were not narrow and pedantic but sprang from “a deep conviction that Sectarian rigidity and narrowness was contrary to the spirit of Christ’s religion” (Goudge 1940 p 15) He also gave to her, her abiding love of the natural world and the fact that God had put it there for people to enjoy and take spiritual nourishment from. “If you don’t look out of the window at the scenery, it is an insult to God who put it there for your pleasure” (Goudge 1940 p24) he said on one railway journey they took together. He loved birds and would watch eagerly for the first butterflies on the Michaelmas daisies, a trait Elizabeth gave to some of her favourite characters. He enjoyed long country walks and bicycling famously leaving his younger students to breathlessly trail in his wake.

Lastly they both became published authors, although in sheer volume, talent and saleability here Elizabeth eclipsed him. Henry once said that “Difficult writing is good writing” (Goudge 1940 p 27) not something I entirely agree with, as to get a message across, it is necessary to be understood and to carry the reader along with you. But he did also encourage her in her career and give some good advice. “When in later years I became a writer and complained sometimes of the difficulty of making imagination work to order I met with no sympathy. If you can’t work to time and to order you’re no good as a writer” he said. (Goudge 1940 p 27).

In agreeing to write the forward for the Memorial Volume of his book, Elizabeth has unwittingly let us into her life, in a way she does nowhere else but in her auto-biography,  Joy of the Snow, enabling us to garner information about not only her father but about herself.

Deborah Gaudin

Goudge Elizabeth 1940 A Memorial Biography Hodder & Stoughton.

 

Book Review Papers and Letters
17 Jul

Child From The Sea

 

Child From The Sea

 

I find it interesting that all the Celtic fringes acknowledge the likelihood that Lucy Walters and Charles I were married, while the “official” history doesn’t give them any credence what so ever. Who said History is written by the conquerors?

I am certain that it was thoughts such as these that started Elizabeth off on the long, often arduous journey that all authors take when they begin a new work. She wrote some of the book in the beautiful county of Pembrokeshire, in a low, long house over looking the sea at Newport. She found out about the family who had lived in the romantic castle, seen on the skyline of Newgale, by being given a copy of a book by a friend “who was one of the leaders in the fight to defend the beauty of Pembrokeshire from modern development” (Goudge 1970 p259). She insisted that Elizabeth read it and then write a story in keeping with the book, something which Elizabeth was inspired to do after only reading a few chapters.

The story begins at Roche Castle, one of the Pembrokeshire homes of the Walter family. It is the only book that Elizabeth wrote that doesn’t start with a quote or poem to set the scene. It does however describe in vivid detail the setting of Lucy’s childhood, a place that had overwhelmed Elizabeth with its wild beauty. On my visit I saw no sign of the stream running down to the sea, although the old part of the village was still heavily wooded, so I don’t know if a certain liberty has been taken with the site, or whether it has altered greatly in the last 400 years. There is in fact a place called Roch Bridge, which crosses a stream that runs into the bay at Newgale. It is only a few fields away from the castle, and maybe the route that Lucy took to the sea. But the castle, unlike the cover illustration of the book is not on the coast.

The first section entitled The Child, sets out the background that Lucy grew up in and frames the possible meeting places that could have been used the first time that Charles and Lucy met. Most Historians feel it likely that they met at Golden Grove, as Charles I visited the Earl there, and Lucy would have visited often as a near and dear relative.

We live with Lucy in Pembrokeshire, her natural milieu of freedom from convention and the delights of rural life, and share with her the discovery of the Sin Eater and the sadness and mental anguish she shares with Old Parson in his distress. Here she is brought into contact with the precarious state of children born out of wedlock, as her much loved half brother and sister are packed off back to the servant girl’s family on a Welsh hill farm, a lesson which she was to take to heart in later life.” The departure of Dewi and Betsi left a scar on Lucy or some thing more than a scar, for the wound never quite healed. That two good people like her Father and Mother could throw two babies out of their nest as though they were of no more worth than a couple of sparrows shocked her deeply, and frightened her too. For the first time she was aware of sin as something that tangled up all human life, even the life of her father and mother and their children. She was never entirely a child again after Dewi and Betsi went away.” (Goudge 1970 p 113)

But for some reason, Elizabeth decided to make their meeting place in London, possibly because it was an extremely unhappy time for them both; with Lucy’s parents going through an acrimonious divorce and Charles having to witness and be a party to the trials and recriminations that lead up to the Civil War. His Mother, Queen Henrietta Maria had fled to France, close friends and advisors to his family were put on trial, and in some cases executed.
It also enabled Lucy to be acquainted with Old Sage, in one of those synchronicity of plots that Elizabeth so delights in and which occur more frequently in life than we suppose.
So, two lonely frightened children meet who are both finding out that life doesn’t always work out how one would want it to. They share the same group of friends, have similar backgrounds, and both have a charisma and charm that would ignite the other. “Something or someone, some day, would pull her as moon and sun pull the tides and larks and she would go.” (Goudge. 1970 p19)

We must remember that the age of consent for marriage in the 17th century was 14 for boys and 12 for girls. They grew up fast and died young. John Evelyn the diarist calls her “the daughter of some mean creatures”( Lucy Walters, Wife or Mistress 1947 p 27) But Lucy’s father was directly descended from Sir Rhys ap Thomas about whom was said” though never more than a knight, was never less than a prince” in South Wales. He facilitated the march of Henry Tudor to Bosworth Field, and is credited with finding the fallen crown and placing it on the head of Henry Tudor. The three Ravens on his heraldic Arms were held in high esteem and fear in the Tudor court. On her maternal side her mother was related to the Earl of Carberry, the Vaughans of Golden Grove, who owned just about all of Carmarthenshire. The Earl had been the Comptroller of the King’s Household, during Charles I reign, and from her maternal Grandmother Mary Rhys, Lucy was a descendant of Lady Catherine Howard, aunt to both Anne Boleyn and Queen Katherine Howard. So Lucy would have been a good match for any future Monarch. The act of Parliament that forbids Royalty to marry commoners was not past until 1772.

At Golden Grove, she begins to understand the fascination she can have over the opposite sex, as she beguiles the Earl with her good looks and charm. “I think you may have difficulty in the upbringing of that child Elizabeth said Lady Carberry gently. I have seldom seen my husband so infatuated.” (Goudge 1970 p 125).

We follow her on her sad journey to London and to her new home with Mrs Gwinne, her Grandmother, who lives in the “village” of St Giles. Here Lucy is brought onto the stage of National History, meeting people such as the eminent Dr Cosins, Master of Peterhouse and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, Tom Howard, whose brother was the Duke of Suffolk, Algernon and Robert Sidney, friendships deepened by family connections that would eventually lead to her meeting Charles.

In some ways this is my favourite part of the book, Elizabeth is able to communicate the atmosphere of 17th century London so well, that not only do we peer up narrow alleys, saunter down wide fashionable streets, and travel the broad sweep of the Thames, we can smell the stinking kennels and open drains, and rejoice in the peace and perfume of Old Sage’s herb stall. Her description of Covent Garden is typical.

“Lucy and Jacob went warily past the open doors lest a bucket full of slops, flung in the direction of the open kennel, should catch them. When they reached the Garden it was full of activity. The flower girls and fruit and vegetable men were at their stalls, spreading out their wares. Nan’s big red hands moved so quickly in posy-making, bunching the flowers together and twisting long grasses round their stalks, that the posies fell from her fingers to her lap almost as though she were shelling pease, but she allowed a few extra seconds to Lucy’s choosing the flowers with care so that Lucy had a variety of pinks, frilled white ones, white ones stitched with scarlet round the edges, pale pink, a couple of sops-in-wine, and one deep red clove carnation in the centre. Lucy leaned forward and kissed Nan’s rough cheek which smelt of carnations. Nan was steeped in her flowers and smelled of them from head to foot, as did Old Sage of his herbs” (Goudge 1970 p170/171) How different from the brightly coloured but scentless blooms we now purchase, wrapped in cellophane from a supermarket bucket.

Elizabeth likes to root her characters to a place, and Old Sage fits his perfectly. Old Sage had his stall as close as possible to St Paul’s church because he kept his main supply of herbs in the church loft.     There were trees at his end of the Garden and it was sheltered from the sun by a great yew tree which must have been growing here in the days of the monks……Old Sage sold herbs of every sort, bunches and packets of dried herbs, fresh bunches of mint, lavender, rosemary and marjoram, and also cloves and peppercorns and oranges stuck with cloves to keep away infection.         when he moved herb dust sprayed from his person like pepper from a pot.” (Goudge 1970 p 171)

Elizabeth’s father’s side of the family had lived in London, and indeed were part of the French immigration of silk weavers that came over to live in London at the time of the French revolution. They probably planted Mulberry trees in their gardens to facilitate their trade, which would have been old and venerable to young Elizabeth’s eyes, she would have noticed the way that towns and cities have their green and pleasant spots. London although bigger and brasher in Edwardian times, wouldn’t have been that different from the London of 200 years earlier. It’s changed rapidly of cause in the last 50/60 years.

She also manages to bring personal remembrances into the story, memories of her Father’s study for example are used to describe Mr Gwinne’s, Lucy’s Grandfather. “Lucy knocked on the library door and receiving no answer lifted the latch and walked in. Mr Gwinne’s library resembled a clearing in a forest, but the open space was by no means uncluttered, having a minor undergrowth of books piled on the floor, like stumps of felled trees. Around the clearing great bookcases loomed from floor to ceiling, dark but yet alive with a glint of gold or crimson here and there, as though light shone faintly through massed leaves, and ominous with a motionless power.” (Goudge 1970 p 151)

“the narrow doorway of the study and on entering found a wall to the right and on the left the ominous darkness of that invaluable bookcase, Somewhere round on the other side of it was my father at work, but it was very dark between that wall and the bookcase.” (Goudge 1974 p103),being a description of her father’s study at Ely.

The plot flows on, in and out of sadness enriched with flashes of joy, as Lucy and her brothers come to terms with their parents divorce, the deaths of Besti, and her beloved Nan-Nan, the loneliness of William, showing her the separateness of the human condition, and the history of Old Sage, which will prove a vital link in the narrative of the story later on, pulling us right up to the execution of the Earl of Strafford. Lucy sees Charles met the Mayor of London and finds a chance to throw him her present of the dark webbed purse she had made him. It would be the last time they met for years.

The middle section is entitled The Idyll, and as such is the shortest part of the book, as it was the shortest of Lucy’s life. It opens in Devon where Lucy is living with her father’s parents, and Dewi. Roch Castle has been almost destroyed and Algernon Sidney has been badly wounded in the fighting. The Civil War is raging, and she is safe at the moment deep in Royalist held Devon. After a further meeting with the Prince cements her feelings even further than the childish passion she had started with, Lucy travels with her father and Dewi back to Pembrokeshire, to make a home for them in the shadow of their broken castle. It’s as good a place as any to wait out the war.

The meeting and marriage of Charles and Lucy is part of Welsh myth, which is why Elizabeth allows them to meet at the romantic and symbolic place of St David’s cathedral. In reality it is unlikely that he would have had the time or opportunity in the midst of civil war, to go to the west of Wales for four days.
It is a clever devise to have them unwittingly married by a de-frocked or at least un-ordained priest, because of cause; no one has been able to produce a marriage certificate. There were however persistent rumours that they had married before the Prince went to France. Sir Edward Hyde writes in the march of 1646/7 ” I am far from being secure, for many reasons, that the intelligence from London of the Prince’s marriage may not be true; we were apprehensive of it before he went, and spoke freely to him our opinions of the fatal consequences of it.” (Hyde, 1646/7 p 346)

What ever the historical niceties, the second part ends with Charles re-joining the war, and Lucy doomed to wait it out in Pembrokeshire. Elizabeth must have known many young women who sent their men off to war, wondering if they would ever met again, hoping that there would/wouldn’t be a child to comfort them, or concerned with bringing one up alone.

The third and longest part of the story is The Woman, and chronicles Lucy’s travels around Europe and her fight to be accepted as Wife of the Prince and Mother of his child, the future Duke of Monmouth. Part of the problem was that the Royal family had no personal income at all and were reliant on the generosity of other Royals, who after the glamour of the situation had wore off, and Cromwell had won the Civil war with the hearts and minds of the British behind him, found other things they would rather spend their money on. So, the enlarging of the household was most unwelcome. Charles’s mother was extremely angry and begged him not to tell people, as she still hoped for a moneyed match to be made, helping them out of their poverty. I suspect that she hoped Lucy would fall victim to any number of fatal diseases prevalent at that time, thereby freeing Charles from his youthful mistake.
There is evidence to suggest that the Marriage Certificate was stolen from her, during the debacle of her misguided and ultimately self-destructive journey to England with her young son.

This part of the book has been the subject of much conjecture and discussion. Why did Lucy decide to travel to England, taking Jackie with her? She must have realised how dangerous it was and the advantage to the Commonwealth if she was captured. Surely she was frightened about the safety of her son, as a future King of England. The reason given in the book is the bequest left to Lucy by her Mother. “Our Mother left some money for you too. There is still some legal business to be done and it would be a help to Richard and to me if you would come back to England with us and stay for a while. You know what London is like in the spring and summer; a jewel girdled by the little villages among their meadows and flowers. Will you come? You and the children and Anne.”(Goudge 1974 p 663). Justus implores her to return to England with him, and finally she accepts. But I don’t understand why she took the children with her, unless she thought that on her return to the Continent they would have been taken away from her, Charles had tried to kidnap “Jackie” before.

But really I think that Lucy privately gave to much credence to her brother Richards’s position in Cromwell’s staff and Government. She was used to her family being in a position to ensure her safety. She also trusted Tom Howard as an old friend and distant relation, not knowing that he was a double agent, and would be only to happy to hand such a prize over to Cromwell to smooth his own path.

The fact that Cromwell didn’t try and execute them speaks of the sensitive nature of the situation. Killing the Grand father was one thing, but to murder a royal child and his Mother, no such thing had been done since the bad old days of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower.

The relationship between Lucy and her personal maid Anne Hill has caused considerable debate among Goudge readers as it appears to be one of almost Saintly Scapegoat and Judas kiss complexity.

Elizabeth had a deep reverence for the relationship between servant and Master, or as is more politically correct today, Employer and Employee. It was something she had seen and experienced all her life. To our modern comprehension it seems as out dated as clubbing your woman over the head and dragging her cave-wards, but to Elizabeth it was one of equality through the act of service and acceptance. It is the Path for all those of Christian faith to try and live by the example of Christ, and Lucy realised that Anne was truly repentant of her former disloyalty. She would have wanted to believe so, as whom else did she have to turn to at this, the lowest point of her life. Anne had become the stable pivot of her and more importantly of her children in an increasingly chaotic life.   click here for the record of the interrogation of Anne Hill

I find the weakness and politically motivated cruelty and neglect with which Charles treated Lucy, hard to understand. I suppose that the desire to be accepted by his peers, his family and his subjects after decades of war, flight and fight was too beguiling. as well as the old adage about Power and corruption. How convenient poor Lucy died before he became King, thereby side stepping the issue completely.

I will finish the article with a quote from the diary of Samuel Peyps, the famous Restoration Diarist, and two from Historical websites, one chronicling the History of Scotland the other from a west country town.

At that time the restoration of the monarchy looked unlikely, and the Stewarts were not the most eligible of bachelors. Charles’ brother James (later James VII) married a commoner, Anne Hyde and Charles II married Lucy Walter, while Louis XIV of France married Françoise d’Aubign, after the death of his first wife. Charles’ mother, Queen Henrietta Marie, was furious when she heard of the marriage and threatened to have her brother, the King of France, cut off Charles’ pension if he did not repudiate Lucy Walters and her child. Charles accepted and went on to marry the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza in 1662, four years after the death of Lucy Walters. Charles died in 1685 without any acknowledged legitimate children and was succeeded by his brother, James II.

‘What is whispered about is that young Crofts is lawful son of the King, the King being married to his mother. How true it is, God knows.’
Samuel Pepys Diary, October 1662.

Taken from the Scottish Politics web site by Alba Publishing, Scotland.

Monmouth was the illegitimate son of King Charles II, born to Lucy Walters in 1649 during Charles II’s exile at The Hague. Monmouth was much loved and favoured by his father and despite his illegitimate status was given a place of great authority within English society. In 1674 Monmouth was made ‘Commander in Chief’ of the army; gaining great respect as a soldier among the English people.

 

Charles II

Shaftesbury urged King Charles II to recognise his son by the legitimisation of his marriage to Lucy Walters. Charles refused declaring he had only ever been married to the Queen. Monmouth later confessed that his father had told him in private that he would have no legal right to the throne. Rumours abounded about a black box being discovered in which the marriage papers of Charles and Lucy Walters were hidden but these were never produced as evidence.
Deborah Gaudin

Goudge.E. 1970. Child From the Sea Hodder & Stoughton
Scott.G Lord 1947 Lucy Walters: Wife or Mistress. Harrap & Co Ltd
Lamford T. G. 2001 The Defence of Lucy Walter The Better Book Company.
Samuel P 1662 The Dairies of Samuel Pepys
Rev C. P. Brown Minehead On Line
Goudge E. 1974 Joy Of The Snow Hodder & Stoughton

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Book Review
17 Jul

Re Pembrokeshire Pilgrimage

Re Pembrokeshire Pilgrimage

Thank you so much for your articles which I always enjoy. I remember my two visits to St David’s; one was when I joined the Easter Day morning worship at the Cathedral. The other was in the summer when we stayed at Tenby and had a trip to Caldy Island. It was also my first time view of the Cathedral, and we walked along the cliff top, with stunning views, and saw that little sanctuary in the rock where a monk once lived. I had EG’s book The Child From The Sea but had not read it so Roch Castle was not foremost in my thoughts then. Since reading the book, (only in the last two years I have to admit, and after many attempts) I particularly appreciated the pictures you put on the site and your article. Perhaps one day we might get to visit again who knows. The vicar at the Church  I attend  was once the vicar at St David’s Cathedral, I ought perhaps to ask him if he has heard or read The Child From The Sea. Probably not heard of it – many years my junior.

 

Marion

Book Review Chat
17 Jul

Pembrokeshire Pilgrimage

 

A day of high blue skies saw us chasing the perfect chess piece of Roch Castle all through the twisted wooded lanes. In gaps in the hedges we could see pieces of sky which turned into sea with ships on them; rather like Elizabeth describes the frescos in The Herb of Grace.

The castle had hidden from us for days, appearing dark and ominous on the skyline, then disappearing into a dip of the fields and a belt of woodland. In fact it shelters modestly behind the new face of the village of Roch being approached through a small housing estate.

Once reached, one wonders how it could have been missed. It rears up proudly on its base of volcanic rock, surrounded by lawns, trees and shrubs, and a stone boundary wall, built to contain the gardens

I leaned on the gate and gazed up at the home of the tragic Lucy Walters, the most famous member of the family which had inspired Elizabeth to undertake her final and longest novel. The book, (The Child From The Sea) is set in the Civil War, a period of history that Elizabeth was already familiar with. But this time she was to take the Royalist perspective, writing about Charles II, his relationship with Lucy, and their ill fated son the Duke of Monmouth.

It is a miniature castle, boasting a strong corner turret and curtain wall, with high up slits for arrows and windows. My palms felt damp thinking of the young Walters climbing from them down the walls to the woods. There was one larger window which I think must have belonged to her mother’s solar, part of the modernization that poor William spent all his money to build in a vain effort to please his wife.

A legend tells of the castle’s founder, Adam de Rupe, whose fear of a prophecy that he would be killed by a viper’s bite led him to choose this isolated site. Apparently he was unable to avoid his fate, for a viper, concealed in a bundle of firewood, found its way into the castle and fulfilled the prophecy.

The main reason for it being in such good order is that it has been renovated into a high class holiday let, so access wasn’t possible on an ad hoc basis. I opened the gate and walked the first few yards up the drive, but there seemed to be no one about I could ask, so reluctantly I left. I don’t know what I hoped to see that couldn’t be seen on their web site, and it seemed unlikely that any of the family remained.

The castle was greatly neglected after the Civil War, but in 1900 Viscount St. David began extensive restoration, and subsequent owners have continued this. It is therefore considerably altered, but the tower is unmistakable for miles around, and traces of the old earthwork bailey can be seen at the foot of the outcrop.

The church however was open. It was just across the road from the castle and with Manorbier farm make up what is obviously the heart of the old village. Was the farm the one that Williams’s bailiff lived in? It looked old enough and its name implies that it was part of an estate.

The church is dedicated to St Mary, a Norman trait and had been built on a much earlier earthwork. The inside has been recently renovated and is white washed except for the wall separating the body of the church from the choir and alter which has been left as bare stone. The font by the door is old and the Ten Commandments were still painted in black on the alter wall. I remembered how the new paint on the vii commandment had enraged William, who thought the parson had done it on purpose; he left his hat on in protest.

There was no sign that the family had ever worshipped there, no grave, tomb or memorial to the house of Walter. Their entire lineage from Rhys ap Thomas, all the pride and ownership they had taken in their home was brushed away, so much dust in the long years since their tenancy.

Standing under the lynch gate as Lucy and Charles must have done after their marriage had taken place, the view in its autumnal quietness looks much as it would have done then, except that the Union Jack and Welsh flags fly from the keep, its roof now intact, no longer roofed with the glory of storm clouds as Lucy had seen it on first visit back home.

Following in the footsteps, or more accurately the hoof prints of Lucy and Old Parson, we made our way to St David’s, travelling up and down the switch back coastal road, through the pebble barricades of Newgale, where the thunderous surf was being utilized by surfers, canoeists and dogs, passing finally through the narrow streets of the smallest city in Britain.

The cathedral is contained in a bowl of land, called the Valley of the Roses, and unusually is lower than the surrounding city. Most cathedral sites derive some of their sense of separateness from being built on higher ground, here the reverse is true. Sited beside the stream is the Bishop’s palace, which is undergoing renovation. The stone and brick work are varied and beautiful, and have been crumbling since the bishop, as Elizabeth tells us, sold the lead roof to pay for his daughters dowries in the 16th century. One oriole window had had its stone tracery completed and showed the green of trees and clouded blue sky through itself like stained glass.

The stream is one of the site boundaries and is crossed by the span of a stone bridge. I think that for me this was one with the description in Elizabeth’s book, and I could quite easily conjuror up the ghosts of Lucy and Charles meeting there at the beginning of his stay with her. The grounds seemed timeless, set apart from the concourse of people in a way that the buildings couldn’t be.

The cathedral is rock like, grey and a little forbidding at first, even in the bright sunlight. Unsound foundations or an earth tremor have made one end subside a little, so that it really looks from one angle as if its about to spring.

The inside is plain, a cave hewn out of the rock, with the usual tree trunk pillars soaring to the carved and painted ceiling. To the left a Lady Chapel, to the right one dedicated to St Nicholas. The walls are lined with recumbent figures of Bishops, Knights and men of renown. The Lady Chapel had its quota of dragons and a simple, effective sculpture of a slate dove, wings spread ascending, between two upheld hands.

I couldn’t find the pilgrims way that Lucy and Old Parson had walked, but behind the alter is the medieval casket which contains the bones of St David and St Justine. It is a wooden box bound with ornate iron work and sits in a niche, flanked by prayers in English and Welsh. The casket and original shrine were stripped of gold and jewels during the reformation to dissuade people from the cult of idolatry. Even at this time of year the place was crowded, and I got very little impression of the quiet peace that Lucy and Old Parson received. The clergy were moving around in packs avoiding eye contact, seemingly to absorbed in church matters to notice the laity.

It is easier overall to slip back in time in Pembrokeshire than it had been in Hampshire, because so much has been preserved. The country lanes are still the main roads linking small hamlets, villages and towns. The intrusion of the motor car is inevitable, but kept to a minimum. Horses clip clop everywhere, and the fields are smaller with mixed farming as were most places even in my childhood in the fifties.

Yet, the area is not a museum, rural life goes on the same way it always has, even if tractors and other farm machinery make it less back breaking work. The churches ring their Sunday bells, the children pour out of their local schools, the post office and the Bakers still occupy the heart of the community. It would be one of the few places that Elizabeth would be comfortable revisiting. As she so eloquently says:

 

 

 

Here in the country’s heart
Where the grass is green,
Life is the same sweet life
As it e’er hath been.

Trust in a God still lives
And the bell at morn,
Floats with a thought of God
O’er the rising corn.

God comes down in the rain
And the crop grows tall~
This is the country faith,
And the best of all.

Deborah Gaudin

 

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Book Review Visitsto Goudge related sites
16 Jul

The Middle Window

The Middle Window

Whenever I start to read a Goudge novel, it always sets me off on a journey of discovery, and I rarely end up where I anticipate. The book begins with this quote: ‘To those who cry out against romance I would say—You are romance. You are the lost prince herding obscurely among the swine. The romance of your spirit is the most wonderful of stories.’
A.E. The Candle of Vision.

Who was A.E.? George William Russell was an Irish poet, painter and author, a mystic who contributed to the early 19th century Celtic Renaissance. A.E. was short for Aeon, the pen name he had chosen for himself. He was a friend of Stevens and W.B.Yeats, producing a series of essays on journeys he had undertaken in the ‘inner realms’, a thesis on his perception of spirituality and the way it permeates the physical and mental planes of our lives.

It may seem strange to many of Goudge’s most avid readers that Elizabeth was influenced and inspired by some one who today would be called ‘New Age’, so maybe we need to put the book in context with what was happening in the larger world in 1935. What was the current mind set of the generation?

Elizabeth had grown up in the Edwardian era, a time when scientific thought was taking flight, literally and metaphorically. Every thing had to be compartmentalized and labelled, including God and the after life.
Conan Doyle and the Spiritualist movement were in vogue, with such intellectual advocates as J.B.Priestly, one of his best known works “English Journey” had come out the previous year. A book in which he had set out to define the English and their working landscape at that time perched precariously on the brink of War and foreign revolution.
The first Eco-warrior of the 20th century, a charismatic “Red Indian” called Grey Owl was touring the country to packed audiences in 1935, informing us of his observations on the inter connectedness of all life. He was even invited to Buckingham Palace, received by the King himself.
Dion Fortune published The Winged Bull, a book about obsession. She was a truly remarkable woman, a writer, lecturer, and founding member of the Inner Light.(1)  A new edition of the Works of Mary Webb was brought out by Jonathan Cape and a Surrey housewife and writer called Enid Bagnold stormed the hearts of young horse mad girls everywhere with the tale of National Velvet, all in the same year. Hope was “springing eternal”, and how they needed it.

The First World War had left its sad legacy of depletion, grief and anger behind, but people were by this time well aware that it hadn’t been, “the war to end all wars”, and needed the panacea of “proof” that life itself was not the sum total of their existence.
The old Myths and legends were taken out and dusted down, refurbished to aid a new generation, their worth reaffirmed, the struggle, the fight, was life.

It was against this back ground that Elizabeth wrote and published her novel, “The Middle Window”, one of her most under rated and least valued works.

The book is about a young socialite called Judith Cameron, and her search for meaning and depth to her, so far shallow life.
In the window of a shop, she sees a painting, a triptych of pictures in fact, which show her three differing aspects of life. One is of a glittering ballroom such as she has visited the previous evening, the other a comfortable cottage interior. But it is the Middle picture that draws her, a painting of a Scottish mountain and loch.
”A world of stark and terrible beauty, of sorrow and failure, shorn of wealth and comfort but yet ablaze with joy, the world of the heights of the human spirit. It seemed to Judy that her little shivering self was flitting from side to side, unwilling to chose either of the worlds to left or right, yet cowering back in fear from that terrible middle window. And yet——– she had to chose it” (Goudge 1934 p 19).

Her quest takes her to the Highlands of Scotland and the ancestral home of Ian MacDonald. What follows is more of a home coming than a holiday as places and people she knows she hasn’t met before seem achingly familiar.
”I’m quite sure we’ve come the wrong way “complained poor Lady Cameron, “and James has gone to sleep again and Judy isn’t even looking at that route the R.A.C. gave us. She hasn’t looked at it for hours…….. Judy!” Judy did not answer and Lady Cameron prodded her in the back “Look at the route dear, I’m sure we’re all wrong” Judy stirred and sighed. “No” she said “we shall be there in twenty minutes.” Her voice seemed to come from very far away.” We’re just climbing up Ben Caorach. In ten minutes we shall be at the top. Then we shall drop down into Glen Suilag.”
”Judy exclaimed Charles, “how on earth do you know?” ( Goudge 1934 p 29)

Then when they arrive, the house itself, the people who live in it, the very rooms themselves are known to her.
There always appears in Elizabeth’s books a Goudgian room, one that you know the author is remembering and describing, probably one from her past. We meet them with subtle variations in Gentian Hill, The Rosemary Tree, City of Bells, The Dean’s Watch, The Eliot books, etc, etc. it will contain; spindly legged Sheraton chairs with tapestry covers, wood panelling, miniature paintings, shabby brocade curtains, china on the mantelpiece, and an old bureau or oak chest. There might be an Adams fireplace, or a moulded cornice, or as is the case in The Little White Horse and The Middle Window, a harpsichord. Whose house is she remembering?

As with rooms, so with times of the day and a Goudge book would not be complete without at least one spectacular dawn, a very important part of her day.
”The cold air was like fingers of snow creeping over her body and stinging her awake to vivid consciousness of the loveliness in front of her. The shadow of night still lay over the garden and the larch wood and the loch and the lower slopes of the mountains, but up on the summits day had come. There were no clouds now to hide the top of Judy’s mountain; it was outlines in indigo and violet against a golden sky that melted through apricot and primrose yellow to deep blue over head. Far up the sun’s fingers just touched the bog myrtle and bracken to green flame. “
(Goudge, 1934. pp 69/70)

As always Elizabeth draws on her personal physical response to place. She visited the Highlands and Islands on a walking holiday with a friend, after the success of her first novel and short stories, this passage describing an experience she had while on the Isle of Skye.
”Suddenly she flung up her head, her eyes dilating with terror. There was a curious, crackling, thudding, sound behind her, as though a galloping horseman cracked a whip as he rode at her to drive her away. She jumped to her feet and looked behind her, but there was nothing there, and no sound but the burn. She took to her feet and ran, not stopping until she was down among the crofts again and sitting on a stone by the roadside.” (Goudge 1934 p131).
Both the character and Elizabeth herself put it down to intrusion of place by a stranger, “I tired to be to intimate and It resented it” (Goudge.1934 p 131)
Joy of the Snow deals with the experience on pages 135 to 136.

The story is placed in three parts, The Search, in which Judith arrives at Glen Suilag and meets Ian MacDonald, Union, which takes us back to Jacobean times, and The Finding which brings us back up to the present.

Each part starts with its corresponding quote, The Search we discussed at the begin of the piece, Union starts with a quote by Jami,
All that is not One must ever
Suffer with the wound of Absence,
And whoever in Love’s city
Enters, finds but room for one
And but in Oneness, Union.
Jami was the name of a Sufi poet and philosopher who was born in the village of Jam, Ghor Province, Afghanistan in 1414. He studied Peripateticism,( the teaching method of Aristotle, who, like the troubadours of the Middle Ages walked from place to place to teach) Maths, Arabic literature, Natural Sciences and Islamic Philosophy at Nizamiyyah University. He was one of the last great Sufi poets, and a teacher of renown. He wrote 87 books on Mysticism, Poetry and History, he was on the cutting edge of thought in the 15th century.

So what drew Elizabeth to a writer from such a different background? I think it was that in his view, LOVE was the fundamental stepping stone for starting on the spiritual journey.
”Love is the Lord by whom we escape Death “(Goudge 1960. p.346)
Also the fact that Judith and Ranald’s love is unrequited doesn’t make it a negative event, but a sowing of love that will be reaped in the future. Are we being told that this is how she viewed the lost of her love, her Ely love, only mentioned in passing, and that she to used the experience to enrich her life? Was Ranald the idealist and social reformer modelled on some one she knew?

The Finding, the final part of the story is headed with a quote from Samuel Butler.
”Yet for the great bitterness of this grief,
We three, you and he and I,
May pass into the hearts of like true comrades hereafter,
In whom we may weep anew and yet comfort them,
As they too pass out, out, out into the night.
So guide them and guard them Heaven and fare them well.

He came from a Victorian clerical background like Elizabeth’s father Henry Goudge. He attended Shrewsbury School where his Grandfather, also called Samuel, the former Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry had been the headmaster. Afterwards he went to Cambridge and after graduation lived in a low income parish in London to prepare for his Ordination into the Anglican Church. Here he discovered that Baptism made no apparent difference to the morals or behaviour of his peers which led him to question his faith. His father was so angry with him that it led to him emigrating to New Zealand where he made his fortune Sheep Farming before returning home to pursue his literary career.

Nine years and five books later, is the character of William Ozanne and the country he ended up making his fortune in, in part inspired by the tale of Samuel Butler? It is one of the few books Elizabeth wrote about a country she had never been to.
The quote certainly encapsulates her thoughts on reincarnation and the legacy left behind by people we consider to be our spiritual families. She was always uneasy about the theory, seeing it as a form of possession.

”They don’t “she whispered “the dead are dead.”
Ian was looking at her his eyes burning her, and she turned her head away. She could not meet his eyes.
”They’re not” he said” they are alive. They possess the living”
Possession! That fear that had been lying at the back of her mind, haunting her, through all her time at Glen Suilag, leapt out now and seized her, just as the first flash of lightning shone out over the garden, showing up Ian’s figure black and frightening.”
(Goudge, 1934. p. 155)

Jesus after all had only needed one life, so why should we be any different? Except of cause that we are not fully realized spiritual beings.
She was much happier with the inheritance of ideas and values contained in the Butler quote and used it too good effect in many of her later works.

This is a book about a Spiritual Journey, a dedicating of a life to values inherent in the life of Jesus and the gospels that she read every day. But I believe Elizabeth realised early on in her life that all spiritual striving was valid.
The research she under took into the works of A.E. and Evelyn Underhill, (ii) were the equivalent of Henry reading the Catholic Missal that so distressed his parents. She wanted to know what others thought about the nature of God and the way of spiritual growth, and then make up her own mind.
The principals and disciplines that Judy undertakes in her daily life, were the ones Elizabeth adopted, those of daily learning, contemplation, prayer and Service Work, which are the same whichever doctrine or creed one chooses to follow.

Collect

Almighty God, who enlightened your Church
by the teaching of your servant Evelyn Underhill:
enrich it evermore with your heavenly grace
and raise up faithful witnesses who,
by their life and teaching,
may proclaim the truth of your salvation;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

From Common Worship (Church of England.)

Elizabeth was one of the faithful witnesses who tried to live her life by the principals laid down by in the gospels. She was however, never afraid to enhance her study by thinking outside of the Anglican Church. But like Evelyn Underhill, felt most at home with the religion and creed she had assimilated and grown up with.

Goudge Elizabeth 1934 The Middle Window
Goudge Elizabeth 1960 The Dean’s Watch.

Footnotes

1 An organisation set up to teach and study esoteric subjects, and the New Testament, especially the Gospels and the teacher Jesus. She was even approached by the M.O.D to carry out physic defence of Great Britain during the II World War against the Black Arts employed by the Nazis.

ii Evelyn Underhill was born in 1875, the daughter of a wealthy barrister. She became a committed worshipper in the Church of England in which she was raised, and wrote a number of books on mystics, mysticism as well as reviews, lectures and leading retreats. Her book Worship is still recommended reading in theological colleges. She died on 15th June 1941, and is remembered in the Calendar of the Church in a special collect on that day.

Written by Deborah Gaudin. Summer 2007

 

Book Review
16 Jul

The Writer Who Inspired J.K.Rowling

The Writer Who Inspired J.K.Rowling
Sylvia Gower

For a book first written in 1946 to remain in print up to the present day, gives a good indication that it must be something special.

“The Little White Horse” written by the late novelist Elizabeth Goudge won the Carnegie Award for its author as the best children’s book of the year. Ever since it has continued to be a favourite with children and continually re-printed. Now it is also available on audio tape, read by Miriam Margoyles in the BBC Cover of the series. It is now in the process of being made into a film.

When she was interviewed on T.V. after the first Harry Potter book had brought her fame, J. K. Rowling mentioned “The Little White Horse”, saying it was her favourite book as a child and had possibly influenced her own writing.

So what does the book offer and what are the magical ingredients that continue to make it so popular?

The setting of the story is a West Country village in the 19th century. At the time she wrote it, Miss Goudge had been living in Devon for several years and had absorbed much of the local folklore about magical and mythical creatures. She seemed to know instinctively what would appeal to children.
The mix of fantasy and reality made both humans and animals stay alive from start to finish and the well planned plot kept readers guessing to the end.

Moonarce Manor Park where the heroine Maria Merryweather comes to live was based on Compton castle very close to where Elizabeth lived. It is possible to visit there today and still see the old well where the moon Princess was said to have hidden her pearls so long ago, at the start of the long standing feud which Maria succeeds in bringing to an end. In the best tradition of children’s books, all ends happily ever after, but not before many scary events have held its young readers enthralled.

The Carnegie Award for “The Little White Horse” had come soon after another success for Miss Goudge. In 1944 she had won an MGM prize in America worth $30.000, (most of it went in taxes) for her novel “Green Dolphin Country” making her a best seller. Until then, although she had been writing since the early 30’s and had gained many appreciative readers she had not been famous.

She already had two books for children published. In 1940, soon after coming to live in Devon, she had written “Smokey House”, using stories she had been told about the local pub in earlier times. Then in 1942, “Henrietta’s House” was published in which she wrote again about the people features in her second novel “City of Bells”, which she had based on her childhood home of Wells. Although “Henrietta’s House” was meant for children, I suspect many of her adult readers also found it enjoyable.

Elizabeth’s love and empathy for children was always apparent in all of her books and it was this and her equally discernible love for animals that drew many readers to her writing. Every book had children and dogs incorporated into the story. The influence of home and family was central to her characters.
She never married, being one of the generations of women who were “surplus” after the slaughter of so many men in the First World War. In her autobiography “Joy of the Snow”, Elizabeth made no secret of the fact that she would love to have been married and had children, though acknowledging this would not have given her the same opportunity for writing.

The next book she wrote for children “Make Believe” was published in 1949. It used stories from her mother’s childhood spent in Guernsey and where Elizabeth herself had spent many happy childhood holidays. Again she used some of the same characters that she had put in her first novel “Island Magic”.
Probably her least known book for children is “Valley of Song” published in 1951. It is set in the village of Buckler’s Hard in Hampshire during the 18th century when it was an important centre for the building of some of the most famous sailing ships of the period. Elizabeth loved Buckler’s Hard which she had known first from her school days. She had already written about it in her Eliot Trilogy novels. She said “The Valley of Song” was one of her own favourite books, but she wrote it during a sad time in her life and maybe this sadness seeped into the book.

In 1964, several years after moving away from Devon, but perhaps still feeling somewhat homesick for it, she wrote “Linnets and Valerians” which appears to use her old village in Devon as a background to the story and uses some of the local lore she remembered hearing. Again it is another great adventure with lots of action and wonderful characters, like Ezra, the one legged gardener who talks to the bees; Lady Alicia with her pet monkey Abendego and the awful Emma Cobley, the local witch.

One of the reasons for the long popularity of the “The Little White Horse” is that the first generation of its readers, remembering their own love of it couldn’t wait to share it with their own children, and perhaps, surprisingly it had worked its magic for them too. One young internet reader reported on Amazon as saying, “I was really sorry when I finished the Harry Potter book, but I think The “Little White Horse” is the best book ever!”

So, possibly the huge success of the Harry Potter books is that JK Rowling has “tuned in” again to the needs of children for stories with magical ingredients as in “The Little White Horse”. The first edition of the book, published by the University of London Press was wonderfully illustrated by an artist called Walter Hodges. Elizabeth was so pleased with the way his illustrations portrayed her characters, that she dedicated the book to him.

As many of her admirers will know, Elizabeth Goudge was a very modest person, and although when she wrote her autobiography in 1974, “The Little White Horse” was in its seventh issue, she made no mention of it.
The book she said she would most like to be remembered for was her novel “The Dean’s Watch” set in her favourite home town of Ely.

I feel however Elizabeth would be pleased to think she has “handed on the torch” for more magical stories in another generation to such an imaginative writer as J.K.Rowling.

 

Book Review Chat
16 Jul

The Little White Horse.

The Little White Horse.

The Little White Horse, the best loved of all Elizabeth’s children’s books, is the story that pulls the majority of her readers into her own special world, a place that we are often guided to by someone, anxious to share their find. That’s the way of her writing, her readers become passionate and involved the more they discover, and want to share the experience.

The book starts with an example of Elizabeth’s own verse, The Little White Horse, and then crashes straight into the action, the main protagonists swaying along dark misty roads in an uncomfortable, old fashioned carriage, into the heart of the West Country.
It is high Victorian Gothic, with distinct shades of Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen), a writer that Elizabeth had read and admired. Living as she had in Edwardian Somerset, she had always maintained that the West Country had a distinct air of fairy about it.

We are straight into the heart of the moral fibre of the story too, setting up the testing of Maria, with her strength and courage, her forthright manner, making her a most suitable and appealing person.

The story opens with the red haired orphan Maria and her Governess Miss Heliotrope going to live with Maria’s cousin Sir Benjamin Merryweather after the death of her father which had left “so many debts that everything he possessed, including the beautiful London house with the fanlight over the door and the tall windows looking out over the garden of the quiet London Square, where Maria had lived through out the whole of her short life, had had to be sold to pay them.”(Goudge. 1946 p3)
Although this didn’t happen to Elizabeth and her Mother, they had seen it happen to many other clergymen’s families. Often, in the days of pre Social Security, people felt themselves fortunate to find relations willing and able to take them in and help them.

The manor house is in fact a Norman castle, set in a valley, surrounded by green rounded hills, with the village of Silverydew at the foot of the cone of Paradise hill. The house is inhabited by her cousin, his male cook Marmaduke Scarlett and the coachman Digweed. It is the proud boast of them all that “You (Miss Heliotrope) and Maria are the first members of the fair sex to set foot in this house for twenty years.”(Goudge 1946 p26)

But they are made to feel welcome and Maria soon finds that the castle is more like home than anywhere else she has lived. She also starts to discover the history of her family and the curse that it has lived under for centuries. She uncovers the true identity of the dog Wrolf, and the beautiful apparition of the Little White Horse, first seen on her way to the castle.

The Little White Horse

The Little White Horse

In 1946 when the book was written, Elizabeth would have had some formidable rivals in the world of children’s books. Five other children were “Going Off in a Caravan” (Enid Blyton) and the Lone Pine Club (Malcolm Saville) were solving Welsh Border mysteries. But one of the reasons I think that Elizabeth won the Carnegie Medal that year for this book, was her cleverness at making it timeless. By setting the novel in Victorian England, a time she knew well and could emphasis with, it would not become dated. Think how silted some of the Famous Five books can be now.

Another reason is her ability to move the action of a story along in the most lyrical and effortless prose, such as these, taken at random from pages 77/79. “It was lovely in the stable yard, with the white doves just coming out from their cote cooing softly, flying down to the cobbles to strut and flutter their wings in the sweet morning air, and the sky was like a rose over the old stable roofs still glistening with dew” Another lovely dawn and the beginning of an adventure for our heroine. ” And then the little cavalcade, Maria on Periwinkle with Wrolf and Wiggins one on each side of her , trotted gaily out of the stable-yard, through the garden and out through the door under the great archway into the park. Without a moments hesitation she swung east. She must not go to Merryweather Bay, but she would explore the park in that direction.     She might perhaps see the sea in the distance.” East towards the rising sun and towards the alter of the sea, a metaphor that writers have used for the unconscious for generations. Too deep for a children’s book? I don’t think it is. It may have been unintentional on her part, but C.S. Lewis used Christian myths and symbols in his work, and I think Elizabeth does too.

“as she rode they thinned out more and more, the beeches and oak-trees and bushes of golden gorse giving place to solitary groups of wind twisted pines, with here and there boulders of grey rock pushing their way through the tussocks of heather. To the cold fresh tang of the frost there was added now the salt tang of the sea.”
I would love to think that this is a description of a ride that Elizabeth took. We know from Joy of the Snow that she had learnt to ride and certainly did in Ely, perhaps Elizabeth too rode in sight of the sea in her Devonshire days.

One place and experience in the book which is drawn from her life is the bay and cliffs that Maria and Robin find at the end of the pine wood tunnels, it sounds just like the description of the bay in Guernsey that she visited with her Aunts and cousins. She describes the rock climbing capabilities of one Aunt in particular. “I am ashamed now when I think of the furious rages when my aunts interfered with rock climbing. Aunt Emily was easy to shake off for she was no more than a gripper of the ankle. With a quick wrench and a quick scramble upward one could get rid of her. But Aunt Marie, a spare agile person who could climb better than I could, was another matter. If she caught me starting to climb she did not grip my ankle but simply came after me to take care of me. She was the dearest of my aunts but I hated her, and said so, when she shared my rocks.” (Goudge 1974.p 47) It sounds just like Maria fearing the grip of the Black Men’s hands on her ankles in the climb that she and Robin take to elude their pursuers. The caves that she describes and all the colours of the seaweeds and rocks and sand, could be Saints Bay.

But Maria is halted in her joyous ride by “a thin high screaming that came threading through the happy sounds, pushing into her heart like a sharp needle.” She is riding to the rescue of Serena and her first encounter with William Coq du Noir.

In only three pages the action is set up against its contrasting background of beauty and the normality of daily life, we find out more about Maria, her character and previous life, and what she is capable of achieving. She tests her own strengths against the cruelty of life and finds out that with help she can beat them.

Yet Elizabeth maintains and uses many of the other ingredients of the current adventure books of the day. There is the map that Sir Benjamin shows her of the valley of Moonacre, surrounded by its green hills very much as Wells is situated, the tunnels which bore through them, and the passages and caves down from the pine woods to the sea, with the hidden treasure of the Moon Princess along the way, the robbers in the pine wood, sinister shapes in the landscape, all could have come from any children’s adventure book.
So could her preoccupation with food. In all the Famous Five books their picnic’s and slap up meals with lashings of ginger beer are lovingly described.
Elizabeth goes one better by having Marmaduke Scarlett as cook to the Merryweather household. His meals, the surprise party in particular are lavish. I think this epicurean fantasy stems from War time austerity, ration books and a distinct lack of sweets.

The valley is filled with the delightful characters that pepper all of Elizabeth’s works and tells us something about her natural friendliness towards all differing sorts of people. Elizabeth one feels, would never judge a book by its cover; an attribute she gives to Maria, and her devotion and love to the outwardly unappealing Miss Heliotrope. Her “invented” London play mate, Robin who turns out to be the shepherd boy come gardener at the manor, is not an unsuitable suitor, and his Mother, Loveday Minette, is “a dream come true. For when in lonely moments the motherless Maria had imagined for herself the mother she would like to have, that mother had been exactly like Loveday Minette.”(Goudge p. 131)
Her first encounter with her larger than life cousin, a “Sun Merryweather” is memorable. “He was so tall and so broad that seemed to fill the big door way. His face was round and red and clean shaven, and his big hooked nose put Miss Heliotrope’s entirely in the shade. he had three double chins, a large smiling mouth, and twinkling eyes of a warm tawny-brown, almost lost beneath bushy white eyebrows. His clothes, most scrupulously cared for, were very old fashioned and most oddly assorted He had a huge white wig like a cauliflower on his head, and his double chins were propped by a cravat of Honiton lace.” (Goudge 1948 p.17). His kindness. love and warm welcome to the stranger that is his cousin Maria endears her to him instantly, and they continue to become closer and more indispensable to each other as the story progresses.
Digweed the coachman/gardener at the manor is pencilled in the margins of the tale like the illustrations that Edwardian letters often contained. “she watched the gnome-like little man as he scurried to the rusty chain, seized hold of it, lifted both legs off the ground and swung there like a monkey on a stick.”(Goudge 1946 p12)
“Seeing him in daylight without his hat, Maria immediately loved old Digweed. He had wide innocent blue eyes like a baby’s, a high wrinkled forehead and a completely bald head.”(Goudge 1946 p45)
Then, Maraduke Scarlett the cook is introduced as “a little hunched backed dwarf,” with his”!fringe of whisker that encircled his whole face like a ham frill “and his propensity to use long words and lots of them, an artist in the world of Cooking.
Finally, Old Parson, the vicar of Silverydew, a formidable person of great intellectual and spiritual power, the Mentor of the story. Who, never the less is given a very human twist at the end of the tale.
All of these portraits are detailed and drawn with insight, humour and understanding.
Maria as well as Elizabeth was an only child, and so relates well to the grown ups around her, there is very little us and them mentality.

It is the marginalia of her stories which helps to give depth to her writing. Every setting and every person is detailed and important, a way of looking at life that Elizabeth liked in the paintings of the old masters, who never left anyone out, giving importance to the great and the small. Her stories became the tapestries that she tired to make during her Art College course in Reading.

Yet it is the animals that have some of the biggest personalities of the book. Elizabeth’s love of dogs is evident in her lavish descriptions of Wiggins. “But though Wiggins’s moral character left much to be desired, it must not be thought that he was a useless member of society, for a thing of beauty is a joy forever, and Wiggins’s beauty was of that high order that can only be described by that tremendous trumpet sounding word incomparable. His tail was like an ostrich feather. He was proud of it and carried it always like a pennon in the wind. His coat was deep cream in colour and smooth and glossy everywhere upon his body except upon his chest, where it broke into an exquisite cascade of soft curls like a gentleman’s frilled shirt-front” (Goudge 1946 p9). He is self centred and pleasure seeking, yet insists on being near Maria, not because he loves her but because “he thought it good policy,      from Maria there emanated all those things which made his existence pleasant to him.”(Goudge 1946 p 8)

Wrolf is introduced as an animal of mythic proportions, stretching the length of the hearth, has a huge shaggy head and from his first sniff thinks little of the pretentious Wiggins. “Through his cascade, of reddish hair that fell over them (paws) eyes ;like yellow lamps shone disconcertingly upon the assembled company; disconcerting because they were so terribly penetrating. What sort of creature was he, Maria wondered. She supposed he was a dog, and yet, somehow, he wasn’t quite like a dog………”The dog Wrolf,” said Sir Benjamin, answering her unspoken question” (Goudge 1946 p19)

Zachariah the cat who lives in the kitchen with Marmaduke Scarlett is also no ordinary animal. “He was enormous, twice the size of any cat she had seen in London. His black fur was short, but so exquisitely glossy that it gleamed like satin. His tail stretched out along the floor behind him for a good yard and looked like a fat black snake; He had a noble head, with a great domed forehead, and large but beautifully shaped ears. His chest, as was only to be expected when one considered the volume of sound that came out of it looked unusually powerful, and so did his broad shoulders and powerful haunches and strong looking paws. He was altogether a most imposing animal, and when he turned his head and his great emerald green eyes blazed out at her, she was almost as scared as she had been when she was introduced to Wrolf. She just stood where she was a dropped him a curtsey.”(Goudge 1946 p94) He will come to play a big part in her future adventures. His intelligence like the other animals out strips the humans. They are the “spirit guides” in a way that help the children achieve their quest.

Serena the creature Maria rescues from the trap is the archetypal symbol of the Moon and Moon magic. A creature associated with witch craft and the supernatural. “But a hare, now, that is a different thing altogether. A hare is not a pet but a person. Hares are clever and brave and loving, and they have fairy blood in them. It’s a grand thing to have a hare for a friend.” (Goudge 1946 p85).

Even the horses that pull the carriage and of cause Periwinkle, her “Joy of the Ground” have an important places in the story and a part to play in helping the humans to realize their potential.

Dedicating a book to someone is a very personal statement to make, and the book is dedicated to the illustrator and artist Walter Hodges who drew the defining pictures to the story. His line drawings and fine water colours suit the gentle tone and mood of the book. I feel that the movie will have to work hard not to disappoint, with air brushed persons playing her characters. Strong faces are needed like in the film Tess, of Thomas Hardy’s work, and I hope they pay attention to details of appearance, even if the title of the work has to be up dated. The dedication is another example of Elizabeth’s admiration for the artists of this world. This work has lived on, forever fresh and eternal, pleasing generations of young girls, and famously being J.K.Rowling favourite children’s book.

Elizabeth Goudge 1946 The Little White Horse
Elizabeth Goudge 1974 Joy of the Snow.

Deborah Gaudin

 

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Book Review
16 Jul

Make Believe

Make Believe

The first thing that strikes the reader is that this is a collection of short stories, not a continuous narrative. Each chapter is complete in itself, an episode in an idyllic childhood

The book is full of autobiographical references and places. The windmill and the walled farm house were both close to her Grandparents home. Descriptions of the island are faithful to the Guernsey of the Edwardian era, the book set in the Channel island home of the du Frocq family, who live in the farm house of Bon Repos on the island of Guernsey.

The first chapter, Make-believe, shows us the passion that Elizabeth had developed for the theatre, something she was introduced to and shared with her Father. It concerns an actor of obvious worth and talent coming back to his roots, perhaps a prototype of the character David Eliot, whom we would all grow to love in the future.

Chapter Two, St Georges Well, deals with one of the folk tales of the Island that her mother used to tell her. We are also taken a little deeper into the character of Petronelle, whom I think is Elizabeth’s mother. Both of them wanted to be doctors, both were immensely practical, and both were out door tomboys with good looks.

The whole book is littered with fairy tales and folklore, from the St Georges Well and its curative power over children’s illnesses, through the fey water lanes that ran down to the sea, the burning of “varaic”, seaweed, on fires in the poorer homes, where the lace that was still being made by hand, to the Wild Forester’s Ride that took place every November.

Rescue on the Island, is a charming description of St Peter Port, the main town on the island. “The front of his dark little bow windowed bookshop looked out on La Rue Lihou, a narrow cobbled street so steep that climbing it was like climbing the side of a mountain, but the window of his sitting room at the back looked straight onto the harbour.” (Goudge 1949 p 65, 66) The Chemist next door made the famous Verbena scent that she writes about in her biography. “He might have been a fairy man in disguise and perhaps he was. It was he who manufactured the Guernsey verbena scent and it was a magic perfume” (Goudge 1974 p 56) It also deals with a perennial Goudge theme of people being too quick to throw the good of the past out with the bad, out dated things, which progression to often does.

New Moon is my personal favourite and is the best story by far in the book. The children are wonderfully horrid. I can remember the misery of buying new shoes for school myself, and Colette I think is Elizabeth in this tale, and the experience of losing the world of myth and wonder are hers. “Do you believe in Fairies?” Peter Pan asks each maturing child. Some of us still do, even if childhood is rapidly disappearing down the wrong end of a telescope. “Her faith in fairies had been until this moment the foundation stone of her existence.” (Goudge 1949 p 95)
The description of St Pierre by night is magical and would appeal to most children. “The black jumble of roofs and chimneys, falling so steeply down the rocky cliff to the sea, were only visible as queer crazy shapes like witches’ hands reaching up to pluck the stars out of the sky, and below them the narrow twisting streets were deep clefts in the rock where hobgoblins lurked” (Goudge 1949 p 98)
Luckily for Colette and I believe Elizabeth too, an experience occurred that reasserted her belief. How else to explain the otherworldly nature of her children’s books, where fairy tales are rein-acted and dreams come true.

Good Old Albert is a fill in story, a childhood romp taken with a donkey through the summer of a bygone age. But in Doing Good, we are back in the auto-biography of Elizabeth, giving away her toys as a child each year to those less fortunate than herself. Her parents, her father in particular wanted her to see for herself how the working class lived, the poverty and hardship, and how the act of offering was as beneficial for herself as for them.

We can surmise that the stories have been written as a series, as we are reintroduced to the cast in each one, their mannerisms and appearance reiterated. It is the small grit in the shoe of these tales, just taking the edge off their perfection.
The children of the du Frocq family were the brother and sisters of her Mother, their exploits and interest the same. Their home although a modern Victorian Villa, was close the cliffs and had an uninterrupted view of the sea. The farm house of Bon Repos was not far away. For an only child growing up in a world of adults in a small cathedral town, the island must have been a Paradise of freedom and companionship.

Her Mother came from a large family, and Rachael and Andre are pen portraits of her Grand Parents, although she felt that she had failed to capture her Grandfather and hadn’t been able to do justice to the memory of the man. She says about him:”I think of the music of Mozart when I think of my Grandfather. The great composers seem to represent different types of spiritual greatness in men. Mozart has his dancers moving in measure; but the dancers are sometimes ourselves, not always the heavenly spirits. He is so often gay and tender in those first movements of symphonies and concertos, as though delighting in us, and in the second movements, while we rest, he sings to us. It is often of himself he sings, and then delight is only on the surface; below is heartbreaking sadness. But he does not wish to break our hearts and the dancing comes again, but faster, as though urgent to cover up what was not intended should be revealed. I am reminded of my grandfather.” (Goudge 1974. p. 44, 45)

Her Grandmother, like Rachael was a tall, dark, beautiful, woman, whose strong personality dominated the family. Elizabeth felt that he grandmother didn’t altogether approve of this spoilt child, with her distressingly English looks, but she couldn’t help but admire her. She must have seen a lot of her own Mother in Rachael, both were strong women.

The last two stories are based on island traditions that Elizabeth loved. The wild old magic of the Foresters Ride and the story of Midnight in the Stable, which is layered with meaning, from the belief that the animals kneel in homage to the Christ Child, to the story of every day duplicity and sin, being transformed into a holy and reconciling action. It has all the beauty and message of her Christmas works, topped of with an icing of snow. As her visits to the island were in summer, this isn’t something she would have been able to write about first hand, but I imagine her grandfather, a keen Meteorologist, would have told her if this rare phenomenon had occurred. This story alone would make me want to buy the book.

I haven’t been able to find out if the November custom of the Forester’s Ride did or does in fact take place or if Elizabeth made this legend up. Maybe it was given up after the advent of the car on the island? Elizabeth usually adapts rather than creates this sort of detail.

Although its formula and content make this one of the most dated of Elizabeth’s works, I think that it gives important information about her background, enabling those of us who admire her to gain a better understanding of her, and what shaped the woman who wrote such wonderful books. Islands were to be an important symbol to her all her life, and it was imprinted here in the Island Magic of her childhood visits.

Goudge.E. 1949 Make-Believe Duckworths
Goudge E. 1974 Joy of the Snow Hodder & Stoughton ISBN 0 340 185317

 

Book Review
16 Jul

Gentian Hill

 

Gentian Hill was Elizabeth’s penultimate Devon-shire book, written at the height of her literary power, when she is living in her beloved Devon-shire village, long enough after her Father death to not feel his lost acutely and a decade before the misery and pain of her Mother’s last illness, tinged even Devon with her grief. It was written just after the War and published in 1949.

In it she deals skilfully with the themes of Endurance, Courage and Human love weaving them into the fabric of the legends and landscape of Torbay and the valley of Westerland where she and her characters lived.

She manages to work in oblique references to many of her earlier Devon-shire books, mentioning Berry Pomery Castle, on p 81, her setting for Castle on the Hill, the village of Smokey complete with it’s pub on p 85, and a legend not unlike that of the Moon Princess and her lover, that Granny Brogan tells the enchanted Stella in the fields of Cockington manor on a bright May morning.” She never dies, said Granny, There’s always the young one waiting for her lover, learning patience through the slow days, and he away in the world tasting the bitterness of it, struggling with the wild beasts like David the shepherd boy. That’s as it should be. He must get his sinews strong upon him for his man’s love and labour. And always the Holy hermit prays like Moses upon the hill top or high in the watch tower.” (Goudge 1949 p 331)

The plot is the love story of Stella Sprigg, adopted daughter of the farming family of Spriggs and Midshipman Anthony O’Connell, and takes place during the Napoleonic Wars. The book is written in three parts, The Farm, The Sea and The Chapel, and the action moves from her remote Devon-shire valley, to the murderous seas of war in the Mediterranean, to the prisons and poverty of 18th century London.

The story opens with a lyrical description of Torbay from the different perspectives of the land and sea. She is so detailed in her description of the topography that it is as if we were an ant on a map, seeing each contour of the hills and each scoop of the coast. The historical setting distances the reader from the horrors of World War II and yet the fears, anxiety and pain would have been relevant to those reading it, who had just lived through it.

It could be argued that the story unfolds in the formulaic manner of most of her work. The characters are ones that we have met before. Stella, the Elfin Child, growing and maturing into a talented, beautiful young woman, The Struggling Hero, who must over come his inner demons in order to be successful in his career, The Rugged, solitary Inspirational Teacher/Priest who guides them through their difficulties, and the honest “salt of the earth” servants who assist them. There is a woman who has lost a child and therefore has the gift to be Mother to all, “that aura of almost heavenly motherliness which so often shines about a woman who has borne only one child, and in losing it becomes mother to the world” (Goudge 1949 p 37) Shades of Annie Laurie, Jill, and Margaret, all childless women who had thrust upon them the care and love of children. Finally that most precious of relationships to Elizabeth, that of Grand parents and their Grandchildren, of the mind if not of the body, “I think its a case of recognition, Stella, said the old lady slowly, I think God creates what one might call spiritual families, people who may or may not be physically related to each other, but who will travel together the whole of the way.”(Goudge 1949 p 31)

Yet, Elizabeth manages to lift them from the norm, imbibing them with a strong sense of realism; we want to know how their tale will unfold. The depth of the history of each, the way they will dovetail to the mutual benefit of each other, has a completeness and wholesome honesty that captivates us from the start.
We suffer with Anthony as he hangs in the rigging, and goes through the hell of initiation below decks, Goudge managing to convey at the same time both the beauty of “Ships of the line” and the truly horrendous conditions that the sailors had to live with.
Many women in times of War remain childless, or lose their offspring, and many children lose their parents, to be brought up by the older generation who fought their wars from home.
The life of the Farm is portrayed as unremitting hard work set among great beauty. “To her husband and herself their work upon the farm was not just something they were obliged to do to make a living, it was life itself, a prideful thing in which they gloried, and without realising that they did so they endowed it with an almost religious pageantry and ceremonial.” (Goudge 1949 p 43)
We live with The Abbe through the terrors and tortures of the French Revolution, we do not have to go far in these days of mass media and instant news to witness Man’s inhumanity to Man. “This thing that was happening now had happened so often before and would happen so often again in the history of the world. The evil, like a volcano, broke through the crust of things, and the foul lava flooded the earth, while over the roads of the world the refugees fled from the known to the unknown horror, from darkness into darkness again, with always the unconquerable hope in their souls that in the night ahead there would be some star.” (Goudge 1949 p 261)

She does not shirk the harsh realities of life, and here I believe lies one of her greatest talents. She can take the myths and legends which are relevant to the location of place she is writing about and transform them into symbols and guidelines to help us through the mundane world of work and striving.

I think that she also tells us, veiled as events which happen to her characters, things that she has experienced in her own life and faith. “That too was a part of the music and the light, and all of them together were like a personal presence coming to him, and wrapping itself about him like a cloak, so that for a few moments he ceased to be aware of the shivering of his body and felt a glow all through him, the warmth of a fresh beginning and a new day.” (Goudge 1949 p 20) So vividly does she write about it that it must have been something she experienced herself, on one of her dawn walks with the dogs that she loved to take when younger perhaps.
And again in this “the light was so dazzling that Charles shut his eyes that were weak and aching from sleeplessness. But he felt the warmth on his face and heard through the rustling of the reeds the beating of great wings. ” she goes on to describe the flight of one swan in particular, flying low over the water, her wings gold gilded and seemingly flying straight into the sun. ” It seemed to work some sort of liberation in him. He thought of Therese again, and this time the thought of her, and the thought of God, “eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God” were inseparable in his mind” (Goudge 1949 p 269) Maybe an experience which helped her through the grief of losing her Father?

More prosaically Elizabeth records all those customs and rituals which went to make up a large part of country life and were still in common usage until the end of the 1950’s.
Sol, chanting the corrupted Latin of the Ploughing chant, The Wassailing of the Apple Trees, the magical instrument the Bull Roarer, with its timeless connections. The folk myths of drowned lands complete with chapel bells swung by the tide, corn dollies and harvest homes, bands playing in the Minstrel galleries of churches, and the custom of lighted candles in the cottage windows to celebrate a great victory.

The book really ends for me with the Abbe and Anthony high up above the dust and noise of London in their green nest of a room, discovering that the Abbe is Stella’s father and that the legend of the three of them had been played out in the past and was being re enacted between them, and would probably do so again in the future. I love it that the Hunting Horn above the fire place in the farm house parlour belonged to the first farmer John.

No detail is omitted and the book is rounded out with both Anthony, now a Captain of his own ship and Stella, pregnant with their first child sailing into Torbay to take up their married life at Weekaborough Farm.

“And thinking this there gradually came to him complete and utter comfort in the thought of the oneness of all men with each other and their God. Of all the illusions which torment the minds of men one of the worst is the illusion of separateness.”(Goudge 1949 p.399)

There is always a larger theme entwined with her human stories, and in this work, the words of the hermit are the message I think Elizabeth is trying to put across.

Goudge E. 1949 Gentian Hill Hodder & Stoughton

Book Review
16 Jul

Elizabeth Goudge Revisited: The lost art of happily ever after

Elizabeth Goudge Revisited: The lost art of happily ever after

By Anne A. Salter

Director, Philip Weltner Library

Oglethorpe University

4484 Peachtree Rd. NE

Atlanta, Ga. 30319

asalter@oglethorpe.edu

 

 

Elizabeth Goudge Revisited: The lost art of happily ever after

As we grow up and examine our lives, it is truly amazing to think that our parents actually had their own passions outside of their children. My mother’s love for reading was a huge part of her world and she happily shared it with me as I began to expand my reading repertoire. Her favorite author, Elizabeth Goudge, has been described as a writer whose books are really “grown up fairy tales.” For most critics of the time, this style of writing and its great appeal seemed quite odd and the object of contempt. Fortunately, this 20th century entity, heavily influenced by her 19th century upbringing, has made a lasting impression. Her style of “escape” literature has become part of the world of today’s readers through a most interesting twist.

The post World War II cynicism of the western literary world found Goudge’s adult fairy tales too sweet for their taste. Their disdain for the remnants of anything Victorian is revealed in their harsh critiques of her works. Yet the public read her books in droves, the titles sold millions and the best seller list was often topped by one of her titles.

Goudge’s books entered my life through my mother’s influence. I recall being told frequently that a certain book was “too old” for me. I wasn’t sure what that meant exactly but I did know that my older sister was the right age for these titles that included such works as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The Group. Other books were my haven and I soon began to read the same titles my mother was reading. The authors we enjoyed together included Nora Lofts, Victoria Holt and Elizabeth Goudge. Ms. Goudge was my mother’s favourite and with the publication of The White Witch, forever mine. Her books were not only hours of enjoyment for us but investments that crowded our bookshelves at home.

In the 1960s hardbacks were still popular and paperbacks were rare. We had no AMAZON, no Barnes and Noble or Borders. The culture of the day was to either go to the library and check out the book you wanted or head to the department store in Atlanta – Rich’s or Millers – and purchase it. Thus I was able to see my mother slowly but steadily acquire the hard back copies of Ms. Goudge’s works as she read through them all one by one.

I cannot tell you when she began reading Ms. Goudge but it must have been early in this author’s career. My mother, like Ms. Goudge, was a product of the Victorian age, for parents who were from that time raised her. Like Ms. Goudge, my mother’s gentle and spiritual character saw and treated her world and its surroundings in a way that has sadly vanished from us. Victorians, the quintessential good soldiers, mustered on through the hard times, quietly and patiently enduring until better times came. Those better times always did arrive no matter how minuscule or unassuming. Optimism and imagination are often happily linked in those end of the 19th century minds and Ms. Goudge’s writing style and personal history reveal nothing less than the unsinkable spirit – a product of her upbringing. Goudge’s books helped my mother through some hard times, so much so that my mother corresponded with Goudge to thank her. She received a nice reply.

Elizabeth Goudge was born in 1900, one of the last true Victorians. She was influenced greatly by that age and her books reflect the passionate link between creation and humanity, a respect for the world and awareness of the infinite links between all creation. The words “gentle spirit” come to mind when I think of her works. During the course of her writing career she produced about 17 novels, 9 series titles, 17 collections of stories, 3 anthologies, 4 works of non-fiction, and one autobiography.

Her literary career was not without reward. Her children’s book , The Little White Horse, won the Library Associations Carnegie Medal in 1946. Her best know novel, Green Dolphin Street, was made into a film in 1947 with a stellar cast that included Van Heflin, Lana Turner, and Donna Reed. Goudge writes of this event in her autobiography as being quite astounding and unexpected.

Her life, as revealed in her autobiography Joy of the Snow, reads like anything but her optimistic and happy ending novels. Yet through it all Goudge remains undaunted and accepting of what life measures out. Her parents were her models. Her father, a prominent clergyman of the Anglican Church, moved several times uprooting the family on each occasion. Her mother, an invalid most of her life, suffered terribly from a back injury. Yet Goudge’s life is revealed as that surrounded by a loving family to whom hardships were part of life and the good times found in the source of a sunny day, an abundantly blooming lilac bush and a peaceful walk with the family dog. Goudge seems to have applied her talent in writing at a young age and became a success but not immediately.

Her style of writing is a lost art; a style that was vastly popular in its day yet very underrated by critics. She drew characters and settings from those around her. She carefully wove her love for England and its history into charming stories with historic backgrounds and engaging characters. Research and writing were her gift and she was a master at creating what is now the old fashion historical novel. Unlike some of her contemporaries, her works lack the larger-than-life heroine characters. Instead she uses her knowledge of real people, their relationships and the ways in which they work out those relationships against the backdrop of multiple historical settings.

In her book The White Witch, Goudge weaves one of her most intriguing stories. Set against the historical backdrop of the English Civil War, the novel combines history and character with folklore. This narrative includes research that Goudge conducted on the Gypsy people of England. Using the works of Charles Leland, she develops a sympathy for the Gypsy characters and their culture into the plot. Leland was one of the first people to study, interview and become accepted in the Gypsy society of Great Britain. Today his works are little known and hard to acquire, but Goudge drew heavily from them to create her story and characters. The Gypsy culture is perhaps one of the last left in the 21st century that nourishes that same connection to nature so ingrained in Goudge’s stories.

Her wit combined with charm and a desire to make a happy ending were a recipe for success. Readers adored her. Her titles were on the best seller list more than once and many of her novels were Literary Guild choices. In her own words Goudge admits:

“I know that happy endings are sometimes inartistic, and certainly not always true to life but I can’t write any other kind. I am not a serious chronicler of the very terrible contemporary scene but just a story-teller, and there is so much tragedy about us everywhere today that we surely don’t want it in the story books to which we turn when we are ill or unhappy… We must escape somewhere. ”

Most of her works were critiqued in the Saturday Review of Literature and Time. The review of Pilgrim’s Inn (also known as The Herb of Grace) provides an illustration of the rather sarcastic and cynical view critics held toward a writer such as Goudge. The review in Time in 1941 includes Goudge’s work and that of Hiram Haydn’s The Time Is Noon, a popular title that concerned life in America in 1929. Using a rather unfortunate metaphor of the “hatched chick” to describe the authors’ new titles, the review is not overly flattering to either author, but most pointedly unkind to Goudge. The reviewer depicts her as “a happy ever after” light weight and adds that Hollywood likes her just the way she is. Times have indeed changed. However, the underlying tone of the review is how can such a piece of fluff be taken seriously?

Green Dolphin Street was reviewed in Time in much the same air of amazement as Pilgrim’s Inn. First the writer derides Louis B. Mayer for paying $125,000 for what is termed a “Technicolor Marshmallow,” or the screen rights to Green Dolphin Street. According to Goudge’s biography she was amazed at the sum as well but received less than the full amount once everyone involved had their part. The review tells the plot in great detail and reserves comment except to say that critic Harry Hansen sees her books as suited to readers who want a “decorative style free from profanity and coarse express.”

The Saturday Review of Literature of 1948 reviewed Pilgrims’ Inn in quite striking contrast to the sarcastic tone of Time’s review. The review by Rosemary Carr Benet acknowledges the Pollyanna sweetness of the novels, referring to them as grown up fairy tales, yet admits they are popular reading and the public likes them. All this is done in a respectable format that leaves off the cynicism of the 1941 review. “What this really is, is escape reading certainly, escape to unreality and sylvan enchantment. Like the Eliots, most readers need to escape from something , if only the newspaper headlines and Miss Goudge’s pleasant flowering countryside may appeal to them as a refuge.

One critic in particular, Josephine Lawrence of the Saturday Review, begins to discover what it is about Goudge that makes her popular. Lawrence’s 1948 review of Gentian Hill remarks that “it is completely incredible, even when accepted in the spirit of far-away and long ago, but it is also rich in legend and love and a beautiful passion for setting things right.” She is now discovering what makes the novels so appealing and it is that Victorian side of Goudge that is suddenly apparent. Lawrence doesn’t stop there but actually remarks on what other critics dared not mention; “I have never been able to understand why it is so often severely criticized. Miss Goudge, who may or may not be lonely and afraid, manages through her books to speak directly to many readers who are both fearful and alone; if for only a few hours she can quiet their panic with dreams, surely she has reason to be proud.”

Bring on again that cynical and sarcastic Time review and suddenly there appears to be a note of finding the Victorian as well. Could it be that someone read Ms. Lawrence’s review? Gentian Hill is suddenly seen as yet another book by Miss Goudge that amazes the reviewer in its popularity. “It is a minor literary phenomenon of the mid-20th Century that novels in the style of the mid-19th century should still be hugely popular. And it is plainly uncanny that such a writer as Novelist Goudge, with almost nothing to say, and small style to say it with, should be the one to write them.” The critic mentions that Goudge’s books have sold more than a million copies each and have been Literary Guild picks yet she is still judged as a “middle aged Victorian lady with genteel literary inclinations.” Likewise Time provides very short treatment of The Heart of the Family. Goudge’s work is dismissed as “a cosy novel with a basically predictable outcome.”

Goudge has left us a legacy of good old fashion story telling and appreciation for those simple things in life that collectively make up happiness. Deep within she has concocted characters based in reality, flavoured by historical research, and tempered with the current day need to escape from the present. Her deep seated “Victorianism” with its optimistic joy in the small things of life and its ability to shoulder burdens until the sun shines again, make her characters appealing, especially to readers with similar trials. Her style is not lost to the ages nor is her ability to inspire. Take for example the unprecedented rise to fame and popularity of the Harry Potter books. It is perhaps the most singular event of the century which has inspired readers of all ages to leave their laptops and pickup that thing called “book.” It is that “good story”, filled to the brim with imagination, fairy-tale like surroundings and characters who solve their problems in most creative ways, that keep readers standing in line in bookstores to be the first to get their next installment. Once again the recipe is imagination, good will, the desire to entertain, and to provide escape from the cares of the world. It is no coincidence that J.K. Rowling’s favourite children’s book was the Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.

 

References

[1] Elizabeth Goudge, The Joy of the Snow: And Autobiography (New York: Coward, McCann& Geoghegan, 1974).

[1] Elizabeth Goudge, The White Witch (New York: Coward-McCann, 1958).

[1]  Rosemary Carr Benet, �Grown Up Fairy Tale�  Saturday Review of Literature, April 24, 1948, 18.

[1]  �A Pot in Every Chicken,� Time, April 5, 1948, 100.

[1]  Books, �Tycoon Mayer & Tycoon Nobel,� Time, September 4, 1944, 95.

[1]  Benet, �Grown Up Fairy Tale�, 19.

[1] Josephine Lawrence, �Magic in Devonshire,� Saturday Review of Literature, December 31, 1949, 16.

[1] Books, Time, January 2, 1950, 66.

[1] Books, Time, Sept. 21, 1953, 114.

[1] �Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem: An Interview with J.K. Rowling,� Amazon.UK, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/6230/104-9170968-9498314

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