Goudge Talk - Page 12 of 14 - Elizabeth Goudge

The Rosemary Tree

The Rosemary Tree

The Rosemary Tree is Elizabeth’s contemporary novel set in 1950’s Devon. When the book was published in 1956, motor ways hadn’t opened up the countryside; it was still inaccessible to most people. Railways were the transport of the mass of the population, Beeching not having had the chance to wield his axe, and the wireless was the centre of home entertainment, even though the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II had been watched on Bakelite televisions by 20 million people.
In America Martin Luther King was fighting for Black Rights using passive resistance, and here in Britain, Prime Minister Macmillan was telling us we’d never had it so good. Albert Finney and Richard Briars were promising young students at RADA, Just Walking in the Rain by Johnny Ray was on everyone’s lips and a stage production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood was headlining The Edinburgh Festival. In the literary world, Dodie Smith’s enduring book 101 Dalmatians was published, Rosemary Sutcliffe was immersed in Roman Britain and children were reading about the Adventures of Biggles and the magical land of Narnia.

We were all still caught up in the undertow of the war, its pale colours leak through into this sad, earnest book. The publishers were unhappy with it, as they thought it was too rigidly Christian to appeal to a mass market. Everyone was tired out, not fully recovered, rationing had only ended two years earlier, and they must have all watched the unfolding of the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian uprising with trepidation. Surely they were not watching the beginnings of yet another conflict?

Elizabeth’s war years had been spent in Devon, first at the Ark and then after it had been built Providence Cottage, and compared to many both she and her mother had an easy war. Their bungalow “Innisfree” had been sold to a family anxious to escape the dangers of London. Devon must have seemed remote enough to be safe. There were no large towns near by to attract the bombers, although two bombs were jettisoned in a neighbouring field, on the way back from a raid on Portsmouth. But the shadow of her fathers death hung over the beginning of this period, he died in 1939, the “threefold chord” was broken. Her beloved Nanny was killed in an air raid on Bristol where she had been living with relations, and the end of the war coincided with her mothers last illness, a sad difficult time. She was nursed by Elizabeth, at home, even though at times she didn’t known who was with her or where she was. Elizabeth must have been grief stricken, worn out and dangerously fragile from living on her nerves, a prisoner to both family and war events.

Superficially the story is about of the Wentworth family and how their lives are transformed by “a wanderer from the outside world “who turns out not to be a stranger at all. (Jacket publicity from the book). John Wentworth is the local vicar and also the titular head of the Wentworth family, who’s Great Aunt still lives in the crumbling family manor house gallantly trying to keep it from being repossessed by selling off other assets and managing on very little, while John and his wife Daphne live in the Vicarage. Daphne is an unhappy woman who feels trapped by her family duties and obligations. Their three daughters attend a pretentious, badly run school where the teachers are battling the warped Headmistress, and the illness of one of only two teachers. John’s old nanny Harriet lives with them, now an invalid, but an indispensable member of the family helping them with love, compassion and her hard won knowledge of life and love.

But, the book is really about prisoners, and the differing forms that imprisonment can take.
Michael, the wanderer from outside the valley, is indeed a recently released prisoner who is running from the shame of his crime and the disgust and pity that he sees in everyone who recognises him. But deeper than this is his desperate need to escape the cowardice he believes he displayed in the war and the fatal consequences it had to his best friend.
Daphne and John are imprisoned in the ruts of a failing marriage, staring at each other from ramparts of their own making, John’s of his sense of worthlessness and failure and Daphne from narrowness and the sterility she feels her life has descended into.
Harriet is imprisoned not only in her bedroom but confined by physical pain, left wondering on her bad days why she has been allowed to live such a dependant, useless life.
Miss Wentworth is imprisoned in the past, reliving her days of youth and splendour, rather than coming to terms with the modern world. Even the house has been allowed to atrophy instead of being given a new lease of life.
Mrs Belling is trapped by her own sloth and greed, having obtained the lifestyle she desired where she did nothing and life came to her, so she is totally unprepared when death does.
Miss Giles by her illness and cruelty to the children and Mary by her temper and slap dash attitude to work. The children trapped by the abominable school that all these bad practises bring about. They are also victims of their parents failing marriage; Winkle’s tantrums, Pat’s bad language, Margery’s timidity being the outward symptoms.
Finally, one could argue that the whole book has been taken prisoner in a bizarre twist, as it is to date the only one of Elizabeth’s works to be fraudulently plagiarised, by an Indian writer, Aikath Indrani who renamed it “Crane’s Morning.”

A famous novelist said at a lecture recently, “writers only make things up as a last resort” which is why good writers resonate with us, we know that they have gone this way before us, a strength that Elizabeth uses well in all her work. Here she gives her father’s physical weaknesses and spiritual strength, plus his love of birds to John who also inherits his large correspondence. “Men and women who had been boys and girls at Belmaray and had left the village would persist in writing to him, men he had known in the war, at sea and in hospital, would persist in doing the same thing. All his old friends of school and college days liked to keep in touch.” (Goudge 1956 p146)

John’s home is an amalgam of all the dark dreary vicarages they had ever lived in.” It was a dreary flagged stoned place where an aroma of mice fought daily with a smell of cabbage and fish. However much Daphne opened the window she could never get rid of the smells, for the damp of the kitchen imprisoned them. “(Goudge 1956 p 18) yet another reference to the general theme of the book

But we receive an insight into Elizabeth herself a few pages on as John battles his fear in the garden. “and fought one of the familiar dreaded battles that came upon him almost daily. The sweat came out on his forehead and his fingers clenched upon the dead bird. He was too ashamed of these paltry battles to speak of them. Since his boyhood he had been plagued by ridiculous obsessions, inhibitions, childish fears and torments of all sorts, but in maturity he had been able to keep them firmly battened down; it was only since the war that they had thrust themselves out again in new forms but with all their old strength.” (Goudge 1956, p 23) I think she is sharing with us how she felt , worn out and dispirited, not wanting to take up living again, not knowing where her life was heading or with whom. It was too taxing to make a fresh start and the old ways didn’t quite fit. She couldn’t slip back into her old pre war routine. Maybe after her parent’s deaths, she too “stared at the ink stains” (Goudge 1959 p 119).

Although she could still paint pictures of the Devon she loved. “was at the highest point of the village, and the orchard sloped steeply above it. Below him the old unpruned apple trees were still without blossom, but here and there a plum tree or a cherry tree was a froth of white. In the rough grass under the trees were drifts of wild daffodils, and primroses and white violets were growing under the hedge by the gate. Below the orchard were the tall chimneys and tiled roof of the Wheatsheaf, and to the right the village street with its whitewashed cob cottages wound down the hill to the river and the church. All the cottage gardens had their daffodils and early polyanthus and in the water meadows the kingcups were a sheet of gold. The smoke from the cottage chimneys rose gently, wreathed itself into strange shapes and then was lost in the grey of the sky.” (Goudge 1956 p 81) Very reminiscent of the view from The Ark and the vision of Devon she has the first morning she woke there.

Later on in the book she uses an experience of her own life in Devon which was one of her own spiritual highlights, a symbol of great hope and beauty. She had gone out into her garden after a fall of snow and had been marvelling at the purity and silence of it all when she heard ” a solo voice, ringing out joy and praise. One would have said it was a woman’s voice, only could any woman sing like that, with such simplicity and beauty? It lasted for some minutes and then ceased, and the deep silence came back once more.” (Goudge 1974 p 138)
In The Rosemary Tree, John has the experience as a small boy in his garden, although the season has changed the experience is identical. “And then he heard the voice singing. it was like no earthly music he had ever heard, or ever would hear, though the loveliness of earth was in it.” (Goudge 1956 p 154)

She also speaks movingly of the swing into depression and out the other side, something she coped with all her life. Pages 228/229 show how she perceived the lightening of her world of darkness and the symbols that helped her to climb from her own private hell out into the world again. Another insight is also gained into her way of prayer. The total absorption she strived for in communicating with God, the joys and failures that she suffered. “Today, just for once in a way, his prayer would not be quite so desperately unworthy of the God whose wealth of giving seemed washing through him now in wave after wave of warm life. (Goudge 1956 p229) right down to the whole business of intercessory prayer became no more than an arid discipline” (Goudge 1956 p 231) something most people would not own up to experiencing, it doesn’t get more personal and insightful than that.

We also learn about her creative process and her striving to write verse, even down to the possible kernel of a poem she didn’t get round to creating about Pomeroy castle, as Michael one evening in the study of the manor, tries to write about the vision he sees of the generations of men leaving the castle to fight in the world, finishing with the old beadsman at the end. “Patience with the apparent hopelessness of spiritual growth was the man’s task, patience with the breaking chalks and the smudgy drawing of the artist’s.” (Goudge 1956 p 258) Elizabeth admired poets and poetry believing it to be a “high” art. She was friends with and corresponded with many contemporary Poets of her day such as Ruth Pitter.

But for all the characters that she gives the importance of place to, that feeling of not being comfortable else where, is not a trait she shares, managing the many moves to her different homes well. So she must have had a degree of confidence, an inner strength that she didn’t acknowledge and John just doesn’t have. “he had proved himself to be one of those whose physical life decays if uprooted from familiar soil.” (Goudge 1956 p 99)

Elizabeth is often accused of being a “chocolate box writer” whose worlds are just too good and perfect to ring true. But here in this book at least, nothing is truly resolved, just as in life. What will happen when Mary marries Michael? Will Giles be able to cope on her own, or will she revert to feeling lonely and bereft? Will she be physically well enough to cope? What about Mary and Michael’s marriage? Will he be able to restart his career or make a new one? Will Mary be strong enough to deal with the censure and the possible failure of her husband? John and Daphne have for the present made a new beginning to their relationship, but will Daphne remember to laugh? and will John be just able to remember? How will Miss Wentworth, used to the run of a huge estate cope with living in a conventional house in a village? Nothing is brought to a rounded conclusion and we can only hope that lessons for life have been learnt. Elizabeth isn’t an unrealistic writer; she just chose to illuminate the positive swing and did not give glamour to the darkness.

I approached my re-reading of The Rosemary with certain reluctance. It has always been my least liked of Elizabeth’s contemporary novels, I didn’t fully understand why until reading it now in my middle age for the fourth or fifth time. The reason is it holds up a mirror to show us all our petty dissatisfactions with our lives, all the faults and flaws that we have become used to which become all consuming if allowed to dominate us.

Goudge Elizabeth 1956 The Rosemary Tree Hodder & Stoughton
Goudge Elizabeth 1974 The Joy of the Snow Hodder & Stoughton

Book Review

17 Jul

A Good Find

March 5, 2008

I was so happy to discover your website in November of last year (2007). I had set myself the happy task of rereading all of my Elizabeth Goudge books because I felt my vision of the true Christian spirit was fading, and no one I have ever come across has been able to capture the essence of that spirit like Miss Goudge. That may have been because her work was an integral part of the shaping of my faith.

I first discovered her when I was in junior high school, about 13 years old, and for one of my elective classes I chose to work in the school library because I loved books. Part of my job was to tidy and dust the bookshelves, and replace the books to the shelves that had been returned and checked in. I think The Scent of Water caught my attention as I was placing it on the shelf one day because it was such a lovely title and an intriguing concept…rarely does anyone mention that there is a scent associated with fresh water. Reading the book I was enchanted with her descriptions of the “little things”; with the three necessary prayers the old cleric gave to Cousin Mary in her young distressed state: “Lord have mercy”; “Thee I adore”; and “Into Thy hands”. The language had a grace and a music of its own and the spiritual depth was a treasure. I had to find more from this author…and thus began a lifelong love of her work.

In my years of seeking a life of faith I have been helped as much by her books as by the Sunday school classes and Bible studies and services I have attended. She has a way of teaching through her characters and her stories that is inspiring without being “preachy”.

So here I am, over in America, at the ripe old age of 56, celebrating 43 years of “fan hood”, and through the internet I discover I am not the only person who still loves her writing. And I am delighted that you have so much here for me to explore! Thank you for providing an opportunity for Goudge fans to learn more about her and to share our appreciation for her books with one another.

Sincerely,

Louise Clark Ashburn

Tennessee, USA

Chat

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 21^st 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

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 17^th 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 17^th 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.

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

Keen Collector’s Sharp Eye

Keen Collector’s Sharp Eye

Hello,

I am just writing to say that I have enjoyed your Web Site on Elizabeth Goudge with its many interesting articles. I have been collecting her books for 10 to 15 years although I am mainly interested in her Children’s Book titles (I have a large collection of mainly Children’s and Fantasy titles). I was introduced to her books by a local bookseller and long time friend Kitty Nichols who loved to read and collected her books. She passed away a few years ago, but I still at times think, I wonder if Kitty needs this for her collection? If I see an unusual Elizabeth Goudge title when I am out book searching. We always tried to keep an eye out for each other interests when book shopping and I am afraid the habit is hard to break. She introduced me to “The Little White Horse” which is still my favourite Goudge title, and I have slowly over the years added most of her Children’s Books to my collection as well as several volumes of short stories and a few novels like “Island Magic”, and “The Middle Window”. Most of Goudge titles in my collection are First American Editions, but I also have a few British First Editions. I am especially happy to find nice clean copies in Dust Jackets. The good copies of First Edition’s are getting so hard to find and expensive. I would love to be able to add “The Fairies’ Babies and Other Stories” to my collection but I doubt that I will ever get the chance to do so. It is the only Children’s Book by Elizabeth Goudge that I do not have in my collection. It was great being able to see it pictured with the article on your Web Page.

I very recently bought a signed photo of Elizabeth Goudge that appears to have been taken at the same time as the one on the front page of your Web Site. It shows her standing in her garden wearing the same dress that she is wearing in the picture you have posted. I had already followed the link on your web site to the posting about the movie release of “The Little White Horse”. I am also worried that the movie will not treat the book fairly. As a long time fan of J. R. R. Tolkien I was very disappointed in the movies made of “The Lord of The Rings”. The movies were quite good in themselves as adventure movies, but I did not think that they did justice to the books. I guess you can only expect little and perhaps you will be pleasantly surprised.

Chat

17 Jul

Answer to Quote Query

Answer to Quote Query

Goudge Talk

The quotation on the “talk” page of your Society web site is from The White Witch, hard cover edition, p. 296. It refers to Froniga who finds herself unexpectedly happy when she is busy treating people during an outbreak of plague. (Brag note: I did that by memory, not by Google.) I’m that familiar only with those of Goudge’s novels that I’ve read repeatedly, which doesn’t include Child from the Sea and Green Dolphin Street. Though those are so famous, I’ve read them each only once.

Lydia McGrew.

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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 16^th 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

17 Jul

Home of Homes

“No wonder we loved Ely so intensely; .. for me, Ely was the home of all homes.”

Chapter 6 in “The Joy of the Snow” is called simply “Ely”, and it is clear that Elizabeth, who moved there from Wells in Somerset when she was 11, loved the cathedral, the small city and surrounding fenland, as well as “the big, rambling, cold old house”. The only child of her parents, it appears that the second floor was largely her domain. “The top floor of the tall, rambling house was extraordinary. There were six rooms, the schoolroom and five bedrooms with steps leading up and down between them and a huge skylight in the roof above the landing. One felt as though on board ship, there was so much light and air, and when the wind blew from the fen, such a turbulence of sound.”

At some point during the eighty years following Canon Goudge’s appointment as Principal of the Ely Theological College, those six rooms were converted into two apartments, and by 1990 the building was used as the Chapter House, besides housing an assortment of cathedral staff. In August that year, our family moved into the larger top floor apartment on a temporary basis, when my husband, Stephen, became Presentor-designate. We had three main rooms, all very large. Elizabeth’s schoolroom, “a big room taking the curve of the roof” that she remembered “perpetually filled with sunlight” – and which later became her bedroom when she went to boarding school, served as our dining and sitting room. The large attic room over what had been her father’s study, became bedroom and playroom for our two older children, Alison, aged 9, and Jonathan, aged 8; this room also appeared to have been used as a schoolroom at some stage, because there was a low platform at one end. Stephen and I shared the third main room with David, who was just three.

Until we moved to Ely, we did not know of Elizabeth’s link with the place, but it was not long before someone told us that she had lived in the Chapter House as a girl, and had recounted some of her memories in “The Joy of the Snow”. At that stage I had not heard anything about the ghosts whose appearances are well-documented locally; and when I had the frightening experiences described in my article for the Cathedral News magazine, I had only just begun to read Elizabeth’s book. Her reaction to encounters with “our Ely ghost” was to ask her mother if she might change her haunted bedroom for another. Her father agreed to her request (for other reasons), but “the ghost came there just the same, and when later I moved to yet another room he followed”. She goes on to say that she was not alone in seeing the ghost, because “subsequent dwellers in the house have seen him too.” That was many years before our short sojourn there, while waiting for the Precentor’s House to become available for our use.

Whether anyone else has encountered the ghost since then, I do not know. During Dean Michael Higgins’ time, most of the building became the Deanery once again, as it had been when Elizabeth wrote “The Joy of the Snow”. When we left Ely, Stephen returned to the BBC to work as a producer and presenter of worship programmes. During a visit to Ely for a broadcast, he met the current Dean of Ely, the Very Revd Dr Michael Chandler. In our copy of “The Joy of the Snow” I found a note card from Michael, dated 27.3.04, thanking Stephen for sending him a copy of the book, and saying that they use the room where I had my disturbing encounters for guests. “I don’t think we will tell them of its history, so far no one has reported any strange goings-on! ” All I can say is that I hope the Dean’s family and guests have continued to enjoy peaceful nights, because I would not wish the experience of that malign presence on anyone else.

I DID NOT LIKE HIM EITHER!

I imagine that most of us suffered nightmares during our childhood; that sense of being gripped by terror, unable to move, trapped in a situation from which there is no means of escape. One consolation of adulthood is that these terrible dreams return very rarely. Not all dreams are pleasant, but few begin to compare with those dreadful visitations one experienced as a child. There was one night, however, about 18 months ago, when all their horror came back to me.

We had moved to Ely in August 1990 and we were living temporarily in the large flat on the top floor of the Chapter House. It had not been possible to manoeuvre the larger items of furniture up the narrow stairs from the first floor, so Stephen’s desk, the piano, a wardrobe and our large double bed had been left in what is now the architects’ office. I decided to sleep down there for a few nights on my own at the beginning of September as I had been under the weather and was being disturbed at night by David, who shared our bedroom upstairs.

It was during the second or third night on my own that I was suddenly awoken by the sound of approaching footsteps. I assumed at first that it must be Stephen. Perhaps David had woken and needed attention. Then, suddenly, I was gripped with fear and, I’m ashamed to say, I burrowed under the bedclothes. I lay there, frozen to the spot, heart pounding, unable to call out, until the sensation subsided and I dared to emerge. I put on the light and read for a little while before trying to get back to sleep. Even while I lay there I wondered whether the whole thing had been some sort of nightmare, albeit an extraordinarily vivid one. Eventually, I fell back to sleep.

How much later it was I do not know, but the same thing happened again. I was awoken by the distinct sound of footsteps, and surprisingly, I was even more convinced this time that it was Stephen. Not only could I hear the footsteps themselves, but I could also hear the vibration of items on the piano with each step. Then once again I was seized with terror, again I dived under the bedclothes and again I experienced those nightmarish sensations. As before, the horror passed and I plucked up courage to turn on the light. I wanted to go upstairs but I was too fearful of the darkness on the landing. So I read a little more and, leaving the light on this time, I lay down and managed to get back to sleep.

In the cold light of day the experiences of the night still seemed as vivid and real, and yet it was already seeming more likely that I had had a recurring dream. I don’t usually mind the dark, but I had felt uneasy moving round the Chapter House in the evening. Perhaps this uneasiness had preyed on my mind and resulted in bad dreams.

Imagine, then, the impact that a passage in Elizabeth Goudge’s autobiography had on me when I happened to come across it less than a week later. She is writing of the period when she was living in what is now the Chapter House while her father was principal of the Theological College.

“The experience was always the same. I would wake suddenly from sleep as though woken up and alerted, and would find him standing beside me. I would feel fear and revulsion, a sense of struggle as though I fought against something and then he was gone”.

While the external details were different – I had only heard footsteps while she saw a figure – I felt that Elizabeth Goudge could not have described my own experience better. What was worrying was that this was now Monday, 17th September, and Stephen was due to leave early the next morning to attend a conference in York. I did not like the idea of being left in the house with the children on my own, even if Miss Goudge’s experience was that “he was not a frequent visitor”. I decided to try to find out if the diocese had an adviser on exorcism because I didn’t want to meet “him” again, nor did I see why future residents should have to suffer him either. The following morning, however, Jonathan was suffering with acute pain in his hip and had to be admitted to Addenbrookes. I spent the whole day at the hospital and by the time I arrived back in Ely at 8.15 p.m. it was too late to do anything about the other problem. I took the precaution of bringing Alison into the bedroom with David and me and we passed two peaceful nights before both Stephen and Jonathan returned home on the Thursday.

In this way, I let the matter of the exorcism drop, though I think I should have looked into it further. If you have not already done so, you may well enjoy “The Joy of the Snow” by Elizabeth Goudge, which is the book to which I was referring. She describes her home in some detail as well as life in and around Ely during the early years of this century. And you can also read of her encounters with the Ely ghost, whom she “disliked intensely”. I couldn’t agree with her more!

ROSIE SHIPLEY

Ely Cathedral News, April 1992, pp 17 – 19

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