16 Jul

American Connections

American Connections

Jo Dee from Alabama U.S.A. tells us her story of her correspondence with Elizabeth Goudge, how she found “that” photograph and why Elizabeth has become an important part of her life.

My husband and I met Jessie Munroe in August, 1979.  I may have put this previously on your website last fall.  She was so kind inviting us into the garden.  Miss Goudge was not well.  She offered to give me cuttings from her garden which, of course, I could not take.  We were staying another month in England and, also, Customs would have presented a problem.  I had located Rose Cottage by following clues in her autobiography.  The postmistress told us not many people any longer tried to locate her house.

Of course, we did not knock, but, we did stop a few minutes on the lane and Miss Munroe saw us and came over to talk.  She remembered my letter to Miss Goudge and hers to me a couple of years earlier.

Miss Munroe invited us into her back garden while she returned into the house to continue cooking lunch.  She left the back door open and their little dog stood there barking at us.  The sheep in the neighbouring field moved over to the fence looking over it as we walked about.  Miss Munroe told us that Miss Goudge had seen an apparition walk through that field and fence continuing along the rear of the house and then disappeared.  This gave her the idea for “The White Witch”.  I seem to recall that Miss Goudge mentions the story in her autobiography.

There was an elderly retired gentleman in Shreveport, La. who lived with his wife in a two story very old house.  The entire downstairs was totally filled with tall bookcases filled with books and books sitting all around on the floor.  I used to enjoy visiting with him-we attended the same church-and we would sit visiting amidst all those musty books.  He usually had on one of those tank top under shirts because it was usually very warm in the house.

One day I just happened to ask him that if he ever came across any of E.G.s books would he please call me.  He brightened exclaiming that he had just acquired a number of her books and that they were outside in a metal shed which held his overflow of books.

I told Miss Goudge in my letter how comforting her books were to us the two years before my mother died.  Each weekend we would drive about 250 miles to see my mother and I would read her books aloud on the drive down and on the way back.  I felt that underneath it all Miss Goudge was a Christian mystic and she mentions something about that in her letter to me in regards to Evelyn Underhill.  I had asked if she knew Underhill.

Miss Goudge had become a “touchstone” for me and she remains so.  Her compassion and underlying religious viewpoint shaped my ideas about the Christian life.  I had been brought up in the Methodist Church, but, she had far more influence in how I see God and the way others should be treated by me, as did C.S. Lewis, too.  I was about 32 when my mother died and am now almost 65.

I was an only child.  My father was born in 1883 and my mother in 1903.  Miss Goudge seemed comfortable with her own introversion and love of solitude.  This was one of the factors which validated my own introversion because I could see meaning in it for her through which she was able to create.

Jo Dee Musselman.

Jo Dee has kindly given her permission for the letter to be reproduced on our site.

Chat
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

Book Review Chat
16 Jul

My Favorite Elizabeth Goudge Book

My Favorite Elizabeth Goudge Book

From: Deborah Gaudin
Category: Category 1
Date: 27 Nov 2006
Time: 13:50:59 -0000
Remote Name: 195.93.21.1

Comments

When asked to write a critic of my favorite Elizabeth Goudge book, my mind goes into free fall. Which sort of book am I going to choose? Her anthologies of verse, especially The Book of Peace and The Diary of Prayer are books I go to almost daily. I love to source the quotes that liberally sprinkle her works, and these are usually contained here. I find them inspiring, a real insight into the way she thought, felt and lived her life. The books on the Eliot family were a kind of soap opera of their day, written long before The Archers was even broadcast on the radio. Who could not help getting immersed in the lives of such interesting people, who made human errors, had human weaknesses and failings, but managed to overcome them for the greater good of the family. So different from the hedonistic self centered lives of current Soaps. But my favorite novel is one of the later works, The Dean’s Watch, which is set in Elizabeth’s Home of homes, the fens of Cambridgeshire and the small cathedral city of Ely.

The reason that this work speaks to me is that it gives us insight into the creative process; it is about the inner life of the artist. Although the thoughts are Isaac’s and he is a Clock Maker not a writer, the experience is the same. We are given the unique opportunity to peer into Elizabeth’s creative mind. The story starts as a painting, a painting of the interior of a Clock makers shop. Her sentences are short and concise, as she draws us into the story.

” It was a frosty night of moon and stars. The city was still.” We see the craftsman sitting at his workshop table, mending the watch of the Dean of the city. She speaks of the linage of creators who have gone before, “he liked to feel that through the centuries men of his trade, had worked just as he was working now”, a feeling of comfort and continuation, denied her and Isaac in family life. She too felt the anchor of the past, the roots of creativity and love. It describes how craftsmen like the shape of things, “Everything had shape, as though the sun was rising behind it”  Finally, in one breath taking revelation, how an artist feels upon the completion of a piece of work. “He did not consciously tell himself that it was his eternity, but he had a confused idea that the dark would not entirely get him while the pulse beat on in this clock.”Isaac, like Elizabeth battles with depression every day of his life. Many geniuses do. She never complained about her illness, but it must have been extremely debilitating. “any more than he could help it that in his dark times all the beauty of the world did not gladden him.” How terrible for someone who loved to write about the glory of the world to feel like this. Maybe the swing back towards the light is what made her such a good writer. I will look today because tomorrow I might not see it.

She tackles all the difficult emotions, telling us about the despair and lack of faith experienced perhaps when her parents died. “She was forty five years old and she had not believed that such a thing could happen to her. Through the years her faith had grown so strong that she had not believed she could lose it. The living light that had made love possible had seemed to glorious to ever go out, yet now it had gone and left her in darkness It had been for nothing she thought” This beautifully describes the physical exhaustion that grief brings, and with it the thankful and wry knowledge that a bottle of tonic really does help. We are tied into our bodies and the well being of ones physical being is linked to the mental. She takes us right through the darkness and out the other side in a way that only someone who has been through the experience can do, that moment when you realize that not only does life plod on, but the people one thought were lost, are found again in ourselves. “The shutter crashed down and the bird flew in on a beam of light Even if there was no God, even if dateless night was the end of it all, how could she lose them while she lived and remembered.” (Dean’s Watch p119) Now she can reaffirm her faith, understanding that God is everywhere, in the darkness as well as the light, the darkness of womb, stable and The Cross.

The story centres on pairs of lovers, who live and work in this isolated fen land city. Firstly there is Isaac Peabody, clock maker and eccentric and his warped, spinster sister. An unlikely pairing, that start the story hating each other, doomed to rub along together in life, each convinced that the other would be nothing with out them. They have been divided by a stern ruthless Father, and an invalid Mother, and have to learn to look beneath the surface to discover their similarities and virtues. Then there is Polly and Job, both orphans, both brought up in the local Orphanage, where they see each other only every Sunday in church, across the aisle. They meet again as a House Maid and Fishmonger’s Apprentice, and through all Job’s climb from poverty to security and an honourable profession, she stands by him with tea, love and sympathy. Lastly, there is the central pair of doomed lovers. These were inspired by a chance encounter from Elizabeth’s past. She had been taken by relations to a ball at Greys Inn London, and was enchanted with the Edwardian splendour of the occasion. The beauty around her had coalesced in the form of “a white lily of a woman”, whose quietness set her apart from the throng of party goers. She was obviously waiting for some one, and when he came, he was much older than her, sad and ugly, but with a lovable face. It was apparent at once that they were deeply in love, but didn’t wish to flaunt it before the world. They danced together a few times then disappeared into the night never to be seen by her again. Elizabeth herself, said that she did not know why the woman transformed into the at first loveless Elaine, but when the time came to write the book, ” I took it out with the man and woman inside” (Joy of the Snow p 257)

Adam Ayscough took on many of the virtues and characteristics of her father, the Rev Goudge. The book is full of descriptions of the life that Elizabeth led in Ely between the wars, in places they mirror pieces written in her auto biography Joy of the Snow. For example, the way she describes the winter sport of Fenland skating. “winter days when everyone went skating on the flooded fields close to the river, or sometimes in a very great frost on the river itself, while overhead the great sky flamed slowly to sunset.” (Dean’s Watch p26) While in Joy of the Snow p111 she writes “The children and the grown ups too, emptied themselves joyously out of the little city and down onto the ice if the frost was hard enough and lasted long enough it was possible for the river Ouse itself to freeze over ” She tells us of summer days when “riding parties cantered down the centuries old grass roads between tall hedges of flowering crab apple trees,” taken from (Dean’s Watch p 26) and in Joy of the Snow p 113, “narrow droves were not places where one wished to hurry, they were too beautiful. They were bordered with stunted trees, sloes, and hawthorns and wild crab apple.”

From the time at the beginning of the book when Isaac stands under the Rollo tower and looks out over the night time city, it must be packed with the remembrances of Elizabeth’s favourite home. She describes her feelings beautifully in Joy of the Snow p 100. “We all have one home in particular which, as the years go on and we move from one to the other, seems to contain the other homes within itself. I have a Russian toy, a wooden painted egg shaped box representing the figure of a peasant woman, a smiling protective mother figure. Inside the box one within the other, are four smaller peasant women, all delightful, but the one who holds them is the best of all. Five boxes and I have had five homes, all of them lovely, but Ely is the mother-figure.” I know that some people regard this work as one of her darker novels, not always easy to emphasis with, but it conjurors up this part of the world so well, that I can feel the wind blow across my cheek, and see the “Ship of the Fens” riding the sky line. It is a place of great spiritual power that drags one back again and again. When she describes Isaac Peabody”like a fly crawling up a wall, scuttling across Worship Street, cowering beneath the Porta,” I can understand the feelings he had. The cathedral does seem to bear down upon you, crushing the breath out of a puny human body. It hardly seems possible that it was built by the labour of other humans, but rather a convulsion of the earth has thrust it up from the core of the surrounding fens. I have also visited it on a winter’s day of sparkling sunlight and racing clouds, when all light and colour is drawn to itself. The Goudge family lived here for twelve years, and the Spiritual strength of the place and the protection and support it gave to Elizabeth, is evident in every line of the book. Love and its triumph over adversity is a theme of all of Elizabeth’s books, but this book in particular speaks of the depth of sacrifice it takes to love unconditionally .

Book Review
16 Jul

Visit to Ely

Visit to Ely

From: Deborah Gaudin
Category: Category 1
Date: 12 Nov 2006
Time: 10:47:24 -0000
Remote Name: 195.93.21.1

Comments

Ely Cathedral was nothing like I remembered. All I could feel last time we came, was this dark brooding presence, who was not at all welcoming. But this time, no threat, no looming gloom, just light, that’s what I remember first, light. From the car park The Cathedral looked so insubstantial as if about to take flight. Inside the highly painted ceiling demanded attention, followed by awe as one’s eye took off up and up into the most wonderful lantern, high above the aisle and alter. The first tier had flowers and leaves climbing up towards Royalty, then the saints in their beatitude, then angels, then Christ in glory right in the middle at the apex, one of the great lights of the Western World. Something I hadn’t known about Ely, and Elizabeth doesn’t mention either, was that it was founded in the 5th century by a woman St Ethelred. She established a nunnery and monastery combined which lasted until the 10th century. The city’s history begins in the Dean’s Watch with Duke Rollo and his castle, which must have ousted poor St Ethelred and her nuns. I lit a candle and said a quiet prayer at her shrine. A statute had been erected at the spot where Her shrine used to be.

In her autobiography “Joy of the Snow” however she does tell us about her favourite saint’s day at Ely, which is the Feast of St Ethelreda. Elizabeth writes that the city gave thanks that day, to not only St Ethelreda herself; queen, Abbess, and Patron Saint, but for all benefactors of the Cathedral. Every one stripped their gardens of their loveliest blooms, and then decorated the Cathedral with, “armfuls of Michaelmas daisies, dahlias, Japanese anemones, and the first chrysanthemums, and the treasures of the last roses”‘ After all the tombs, chantry and aisles etc had been decorated with flowers, there was a festival service and the choir then proceeded around the Cathedral singing “For All The Saints”. Then in splendid Edwardian fashion, they all trooped off to High tea at The Deanery. I can only think that Elizabeth must have taken part in these parties with reluctance. Not only was she shy in company, but her figure was always so slender!

Elizabeth grew up in this sheltered city in the Fens. She and her family spent twelve very happy years here. Even being send away to school was muted by the glory of the homecoming. Her father was a canon at the cathedral and a principle of the theological college here, and for her mother it was a light airy place, with sea like views over the Fens. Here, in the hard heart of the fens her creative mind expanded and took flight. The austerity of the sweeping winds, the vast expanses of sky and cloud, the small, secure social rounds that build up a community were all vastly appealing to Elizabeth. I went and sat outside Bishop West’s Chantry Chapel. Inside I could hear the hum of women talking and holding a prayer meeting. Eventually, two ladies came out. One, who was quite elderly but very smartly dressed, helped the other even older woman into a wheelchair. They both set off down the aisle twittering softly to each other like small brown birds! Very Goudgian!When the rest of the ladies had left, all of whom smiled or greeted me in passing, I went inside.

The stone had been carved and fretted until it resembled a giant wedding cake, a wedding of the Soul and mind. From the windows obscure saints stare down at me. The dominant colour was dark blue, very striking. All the hassocks have been embroidered with a Tudor Rose. The ceiling has ornate angels, blowing trumpets, praying, all in a very elaborate Italianate manner. The sun came and went on the page and I felt an affinity with Elizabeth Goudge I had not looked for last time I came. Psalm 84:10 arrested my attention as I was leaving the chapel. I would rather be a Doorkeeper in the house of My God, than dwell in the tents of wickedness. Although the tents of wickedness sound quite fun!

The sentiment is one I concur with. Our last port of call was The Lady Chapel. Again the first impression was one of light. It had been the brunt of Parliamentarian anger, as it was dedicated to Mary, an idol, as they saw it. All the statues and frescos portraying the life of Jesus and Mary had had all their heads smashed off. No carving was left intact. The windows were smashed, which lost all the medieval glass, but did let the light in. A new statue of the Virgin Mary has been commissioned for the millennium. She is large, very blue, and has Her arms held aloft and empty. Her son has already been taken from Her. But She has more left to give. Although She looked a little Disneyeque, She was very striking. The whole place appeared to be scoured out. It reminded me of a woman after her menopause, not ready for death, with life still in her, children of her body gone, ready for children of the mind to take their place. Again, I don’t know why, Elizabeth seems to miss out all mention of the Lady Chapel. I know that she wasn’t anti catholic, and indeed writes movingly about their faith. Like all truly spiritual people, she does not differentiate between faiths. It is the love of God and the striving for right motive which she depicts. Work men were renovating the Processional Way to the chapel and had already completed the chapel ceiling. With the aid of a wonderful mirror on wheels, we were able to see all the bosses. There were two dragons curled up asleep, like cats. The Way had been repaired using lovely wood and gold headed angels, putti, as in Henrietta’s bedroom in Wells.

Visitsto Goudge related sites
16 Jul

Christmas Reading

Christmas Reading

From: Marion
Category: Category 1
Date: 11 Nov 2006
Time: 20:52:00 -0000
Remote Name: 195.93.21.136

Comments

Hello, I was born and live in Hampshire not too far from the area mentioned in the articles and have enjoyed many trips around those places. Thank you to the one who created this website. It will soon be time for us to reach for our favourite Christmas reads again, including Sister Of The Angels – always a delight. I wonder what gave Elizabeth Goudge the inspiration for the cathedral crypt. In actual fact there is no crypt at Wells Cathedral. Any ideas? – Marion.

 

Chat
16 Jul

Marion & The crypt at Wells Cathedral

Marion & The crypt at Wells Cathedral

From: Deborah Gaudin
Category: Category 1
Date: 21 Nov 2006
Time: 15:07:28 -0000
Remote Name: 195.93.21.1

Comments

Hi Marion, It has taken a while to respond to your question, as it sent me off on a mission to find out the answer. In fact, Wells does have a Crypt. In the Cathedrals of Britain, it attributes the Crypt of The Chapter House to the 12th century, and a painter called Samuel Rayner has painted two pictures entitled The Crypt at Wells Cathedral. I also know someone whose Uncle Tom conducted services in The Crypt. I am still waiting for a definitive answer from the Vergers at the cathedral. but the person I spoke to on the phone, also thought they had one, but didn’t know anything about it. More to follow! As for the Christmas Reading, until last year my choice fluctuated between The Dean’s Watch and The Scent of Water, but I now own her Christmas Book, which is full of the flavour of a Goudge Christmas! Watch the site for a Christmas Special. Regards Deborah

Update on the Crypt at Wells Cathedral

From: Deborah Gaudin
Category: Category 1
Date: 21 Nov 2006
Time: 17:21:16 -0000
Remote Name: 195.93.21.1

Comments

Marion. I was phoned this afternoon by a very charming Verger from Wells Cathedral. You were correct, there is no Crypt in the Cathedral. But, they do have an Undercroft! This was used in the past, and services were held there. So maybe that is where Elizabeth placed the more romantic sounding Crypt. At present it is being used for storage, but the Cathedral hope to develop it as a Tourist & Information Centre in the future.

Re: My Favourite Elizabeth Goudge Book

From: Paul
Category: Category 1
Date: 01 Jan 2007
Time: 10:26:37 -0000
Remote Name: 62.252.64.33

Comments

Hello Marion, Thank you for your good wishes for Christmas and the New Year. May I wish you, and everyone, a New Year filled with lovely things. I do hope you will read THE WHITE WITCH. I found it difficult at first, then picked it up another time and have never looked back. The ending is so beautiful. It ranks, with me, alongside the ending to THE WOODLANDERS by Thomas Hardy, said to be the loveliest in English literature. Paul

Lady of Wells

From: Marion
Category: Category 1
Date: 27 Nov 2006
Time: 13:03:25 -0000
Remote Name: 195.93.21.136

Comments

With talk of the crypt etc: I thought the following link and info: which was passed my way some time ago would be of historical interest to those here who love the location of A City Of Bells etc:- http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/somerset/4683644.stm Marion.

 

From: Deborah
Category: Category 1
Date: 05 Jan 2007
Time: 21:45:26 -0000
Remote Name: 195.93.21.98

Comments

Re: Phillippa Pearce

Sad to hear of the sudden death of Phillippa Pearce on 2nd January. She had returned to live next to the mill house she grew up in, the garden of which was the inspiration for Tom’s Midnight Garden. It enthralled her to think that as a child, she was playing in the same garden as her father had done. A great writer who will be fondly remembered.

Chat
12 Mar

Paper Treasure

From: Deborah Gaudin
Category: Category 1
Date: 08 Oct 2006

In the corner of my bedroom stands a bookcase, of three shelves. It is well out of the way of direct sunlight, and directly in my line of vision from the bed. It contains the most precious books in my collection, not always the most expensive, although some of them are, but the ones that sound the deepest resonance with me. Naturally this is where my collection of Elizabeth Goudge books lives,  making up the largest group of books on the shelves. Some that are not by her have a bearing on her life and work.

I was found by Elizabeth Goudge, age nine, at a friends house by accident one wet afternoon, in the form of a tatty paperback called “The Little White Horse”. My friend had been bought it by her elder sister, and didn’t care for it at all. I on the other hand couldn’t put it down. From the moment the carriage lurches, and Miss Heliotrope, Maria Merryweather and Wiggins fall into each others arms, I was enchanted. The spell was only deepened as Digweed swung from the bell rope, and trundled them through the tunnel.

How could any child processed of an imagination not know that an enchanted and other worldly kingdom awaited not only Maria, but anyone courageous enough to accompany her. The Cathedral books and The White Witch followed on over the next few years, until I was eagerly searching for other titles by this remarkable author. She seemed able to bring the world of the spirit into the every day and make of the mundane something fresh and new. I set out to find all of her books, and was lucky enough to do so with the exception of her plays and one early set of stories.

I caught the news of her death in 1984 by accident. I was married by this time with my first child on the way and a new house in a strange town to look after. I felt as though a beloved distant relative had died, and that now, I would never get a chance to tell her how much I admired and loved her. I re read all her work, and started to fill in the gaps that I hadn’t got around to filling. Suddenly every word she had written was doubly precious, as there weren’t going to be any more. I sought out copies of her Omnibus edition of the Eliots of Damerosehay; this had a forward in it that filled in a tiny piece of knowledge. Her auto biography, anthologies and Diary of Prayer, soon followed. I found the guide she had written for the Chapel at Buckler’s Hard, and that she had written the jacket publicity for a number of books such as “Rider on the White Horse”, and “Sword at Sunset”, both written by another favourite author of mine Rosemary Sutcliff.

This is when the wonderful, Goudgian event occurred. My husband mentioned that he had seen the first editions of The Sword and the Circle, The Road to Camlann and The Light Beyond the Forest by Rosemary Sutcliff for sale, and that they were signed by the author. Was I interested? Of cause I was, how could I resist? When the books arrived, they were in perfect condition, obviously never been read, and indeed they were signed by the author, and dedicated to “Elizabeth with love.” One of the books also contained a letter. It said; “Elizabeth, my poor Darling! Jessie told me about your poor pinned leg and I am so sorry! This is really just a Get Well Card, I’ll write properly when you feel more up to letters, and meanwhile I’ll phone Jessie for news. Much love Rosemary” It was dated April 24th. For anyone familiar with Elizabeth’s biography, the connection of the two names Jessie and Elizabeth in the same missive had to be more than coincidence! In the “World of Elizabeth Goudge” Sylvia Gower tells us how in the early spring of 1978, Elizabeth had a fall at home and injured her leg so badly she had to go to hospital. Seven months later she was still in pain enough to mention her pinned leg in correspondence.

Elizabeth told a reporter that Jessie was a great help to her with her files and papers, and indeed was told to burn all superfluous material after her death. I am sure that Elizabeth would have corresponded with a number of contemporary authors, such as Rosemary Sutcliff, especially as they belonged to the same publishing house. If a friend knows another is unwell and wishes to send love and good wishes to them, what could be more natural than sending something “home made” or personal with the wish? For most of us it would be a pot of home made jam, or a bunch of garden flowers. But between authors, first editions of their new book! What an addition to a collection. To be able to think that Elizabeth would at least have had the letter read to her, if not actually held it. The very books themselves must have come from her library. I think that along with Parson Hawthorne (The White Witch) Elizabeth held books to be “the best of the earthly meats”, and how rich a new book could make them both feel. These books have now become a treasured part of my collection, a nugget of gold in a jewelled casket of books.

 

Re: Paper Treasure

From: Jo
Category: Category 1

Comments

I thoroughly appreciated the information contained in this posting. Thank you. My husband and I visited with Jessie Monroe outside of Rose Cottage in August, 1979. She was so gracious to us and invited her into their garden and offered cuttings of plants from the garden. She said Miss Goudge had just returned from a nursing home.

 

Papers and Letters
12 Mar

Hampshire Pilgrimage

From: Deborah Gaudin
Category: Category 1
Date: 22 Sep 2006
Our first adventure was a pilgrimage I had wanted to make for a long time. It was in fact one of the chief reasons for choosing to come to this part of the country. Elizabeth Goudge went to school here, wrote her Eliot Saga based in this area, and was passionately fond of it. I’m not sure why she didn’t come and live here, instead of Oxfordshire, which she had to learn to love.  We drove through the New Forest, heath land covered in gorse and heather in its dormant state, but groups of beautiful, ponies and small new forest horses, some with young. Very cute! The woods closed back in and we drove past a cluster of houses around a lake with swans, and then the road turned under some dark trees, a short drive along a lane and we were at Buckler’s Hard. This was the point on the coast that I wanted to start at. Many of E.G. characters, especially the Eliots were always visiting. It was obviously one of the places E.G. visited when at school. Although I was slightly miffed at paying to get in, it was well worth the small charge paid. As Nick said, it had ensured its survival. It surpassed all expectations. A quiet street of red brick houses sloping down to the waters of a tree lined estuary. We were enchanted. The weather had kept most people away, and we virtually had the place to ourselves for the first two hours. We walked along the water front admiring the boats, sparkling water, and tree clad shores. Nick was in his element, snapping away at views and piles of cut timber, some of which looked like baby Crux. We walked a little further past King George’s Son’s Bath house, a thatched covered salt water swimming pool, built to help alleviate the pain of his arthritis, past the dry docks of the marine, through the woods for a way until, we decided that we would rather go on a trip down the estuary than walk further.

We got back to the jetty in time for the 11.30 boat trip. 11.30 came and went and we were the only people aboard, so the obliging crew of two took Nick and I all on our own on a cruise down the river to the estuary and back to Buckler’s Hard. It was beautiful. Houses of great wealth and beauty were sited here and there, glimpsed through trees or up lawns where herds of deer grazed. George and Nadine wouldn’t have stood a chance of buying an Inn on the river now, unless they were multi millionaires. I did see the ghost of Damerosehay serene behind a mini oak wood, large porch gazing out across the estuary waters. One could imagine hearing the plover greet the dawn here. One of the stranger sights was a series of slender, mast like trees, presumably alder, swaying above the tidal flow like the masts of drowned boats. The view of Buckler’s Hard from the water as sailors and workmen would have seen it, an atavistic pleasure. Like them I wanted to go straight to the chapel to say a prayer of thanks for a safe journey. So we shook hands cordially with the crew, who had been fascinated by Nick snapping away and wanted to know if he had got the shots he wanted.

The slope up from the river is quite steep and the slapping of the water passed into silence, as I stood outside the oak door of the chapel. It had been the cobbler’s shop and a dame school, before being converted to a chapel mainly by Lady Poole, who certainly made it beautiful. It is panelled in oak, carved and plain, with a statue of the Black Madonna in a lit niche. The alter cloth embroidered by and for a local family with symbols that meant something to them. I sat in silence and said a prayer for Kate and Sylvia.   The wind sighed under the loose fitting door, the only other sound the Tink Tink of the sail ropes against the metal masts, that sad, haunting music of the foreshore. I felt blessed. I had finally made it to one of the places E.G. loved best. A question had been answered, thanks and praise given.

It was time to leave. We left to twist slowly along country lanes, keeping the salt marshes and the sea on our left, while overhead, banked masses of clouds scudded along in a deep blue sky. The lanes led us to the awe inspiring totally unexpected sight of a ruined Abbey, church, called St Leonard’s, which was built into the walls and structure of a farm. A mare and her blond foal were IMG_4962grazing the verges, and a stocky fawn coloured stallion came to inspect me and see if this strange human had any food. Happening to meet a man, before I got into the village, I, pointing with my whip, across towards the Abbey, said to the man, ‘I suppose there is a bridge down here to get across to the Abbey.’ ‘That’s not the Abbey, Sir,’ says he: ‘The Abbey is about four miles further on.’ I was astonished to hear this; but he was very positive; said that some people called it the Abbey; but that the Abbey was further on; and was at a farm occupied by farmer John Biel. Having chapter and verse for it, as the saying is, I believed the man; and pushed on towards farmer John Biel’s, which I found, as he had told me, at the end of about four miles. When I got there (not having, observe, gone over the water to ascertain that the other was the spot where the Abbey stood), I really thought, at first, that this must have been the site of the Abbey of Beaulieu; because, the name meaning fine place, this was a thousand times finer place that where the Abbey, as I afterwards found, really stood. After looking about it for some time, I was satisfied that it had not been an abbey; but the place is one of the finest that ever was seen in this world. It stands at about half a mile’s distance from the water’s edge at high-water mark, and at about the middle of the space along the coast, from Calshot castle to Lymington haven. It stands, of course, upon a rising ground; it has a gentle slope down to the water. To the right, you see Hurst castle, and that narrow passage called the Needles, I believe; and, to the left, you see Spithead, and all the ships that are sailing or lie any where opposite Portsmouth. The Isle of Wight is right before you, and you have in view, at one and the same time, the towns of Yarmouth, Newton, Cowes and Newport, with all the beautiful fields of the island, lying upon the side of a great bank before, and going up the ridge of hills in the middle of the island.

Here are two little streams, nearly close to the ruin, which filled ponds for fresh water fish; while there was the Beaulieu river at about half a mile or three quarters of a mile to the left, to bring up the salt-water fish. The ruins consist of part of the walls of a building about 200 feet long and about 40 feet wide. It has been turned into a barn, in part, and the rest into cattle-sheds, cow-pens, and enclosures and walls to enclose a small yard. But, there is another ruin, which was a church or chapel, and which stands now very near to the farm house of Mr. John Biel, who rents the farm of the Duchess of Buccleugh, who is now the owner of the abbey-lands and of the lands belonging to this place. The little church or chapel, of which I have just been speaking, appears to have been a very beautiful building. A part only of its walls are standing; but you see, by what remains of the arches, that it was finished in manner the most elegant and expensive of the day in which it was built. Part of the outside of the building is now surrounded by the farmer’s garden; the interior is partly a pig-stye and partly a goose-pen. Under that arch which had once seen so many rich men bow their heads, we entered into the goose-pen, which is by no means one of the nicest concerns in the world. Beyond the goose-pen was the pig stye and in it a hog, which, when fat, will weigh about 30 score, actually rubbing his shoulders against the little sort of column which had supported the font and its holy water. The farmer told us that there was a hole, which, indeed, we saw, going down into the wall, or rather, into the column where the font had stood. And he told us that many attempts had been made to bring water to fill that hole, but that it had never been done. Mr. Biel was very civil to us.

As far as related to us, he performed the office of hospitality, which was the main business of those who formerly inhabited the spot. … So much for the abbey; and, now, as for the ruins on the farm of Mr. John Biel, they were the dwelling-place of Knights’ Templars, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The building they inhabited was called an Hospital, and their business was, to relieve travellers, strangers, and persons in distress; and, if called upon, to accompany the king in his wars to uphold Christianity. Their estate was also confiscated by Henry VIII. It was worth at the time of being confiscated, upwards of two thousand pounds a year, money of the present day. This establishment was founded a little before the Abbey of Beaulieu was founded; and it was this foundation and not the other, that gave the name of Beaulieu to both establishments. The abbey is not situated in a very fine place. The situation is low; the lands above it rather a swamp than otherwise; pretty enough, altogether; but, by no means a fine place. The Templars had all the reason in the world to give the name of Beaulieu to their place. And it is by no means surprising, that the monks were willing to apply it to their abbey.

This description of St Leonard’s was written by William Cobbett in his Hampshire Rides and certainly can not be bettered by me. I was thrilled to find out the ruins were so important, more so than the Abbey which we ignored. Summer’s angels, the swifts and swallows were haunting the walls, flying in and out of windows and doors, tracing their flight routes where roof beams once straddled the ether. I had a strong conviction at the time and do so even more now, that E.G. had seen these ruins too and that she had used them as inspiration for “Herb of Grace” She loved the old writers so much and adored Hampshire, so I can not believe that she hadn’t read Cobbett.

We too had lunch over looking the Solent and Island, at a place called Needs Oar Point, which had been an advanced landing ground during the war. The ruins of the Templars behind us we started off refreshed to Keyhaven and the Salt marshes. The rain was misting across the fields and Hurst castle barely visible, obscured by rain and sea spray. It did a very good job of brooding. The shingle bank still hides some of the caravans that so offended E.G. What it also does, as well as being an excellent sea defence, is hide an incredible view of the Needles. E.G never mentions them in her description of the Island. Perhaps they located it too precisely for her comfort. One is down in the saltings right on the shoreline at this point, no colours reflecting from the sky but greys no birds visible except the ever hungry gulls. I did notice sea lavender and poppy and holly though. I think this is part of the coast line that she played around with a bit, Damerosehay and the Inn being her two points of the compass. We didn’t seek out Lavender Cottage, the third point, as Big Village doesn’t really exist.

Next stop New Milton and the final resting place the Goudge family chose. After circling around like pigeons we finally found the church of St Mary Magdalene and its HUGE grave yard. Nick left me to wander around for a while looking at bluebells, archaic grave stones, forlorn graves, desecrated crosses, dark dripping yews, and listen to the sound of traffic, coming muffled by trees from the passing road. I couldn’t imagine how I would start looking for the grave itself or what on earth E.G was doing being buried here. I remembered from S.G. that it was a cross and a flat slab, but nothing to indicate whereabouts it was. I wandered towards the edge of the cemetery where it was bounded by a brick wall. A path lead off through the trees towards the newer part of the ground. Then suddenly there it was, under the boughs of a shading dark fir. The only green on it the fading leaves of some snowdrops that had once been planted there. For the rest, grey of marble, the simplest of slabs recording the bare fact of her being, and that she was a beloved author, and the rusty bronze of dead fir needles. I felt a genuine grief that she was not more feted and celebrated. Later on in the holiday, I was to find this a minor reoccurring theme. It puzzled me for a long time, why the family chose to be buried here. Apart from it being where they lived at the time, and where Rev Goudge ministered. Now I think it was also he’s last tongue in cheek to he’s strict Calvinist up bringing. Reading E.G.s auto biography again, the incident of his parents finding the Catholic Literature in his bedroom caught my attention. To be buried at St Mary Magdalene, how delightful! I found the whole day insightful, thrilling, enthralling, and emotionally draining.

There is no doubt that the shade of E.G. was at my shoulder for parts of the day, gently nudging me in the right directions. Later, at home, I realized I had even been sitting in the same seat she used at the Chapel Look at this view, experience this peace, marvel at this wonder The eternal verities are still here, even if jets roar over head, and there are more cars than ever. .The ruins a point in question, and the finding of her grave, well that was almost as if she had directed me there. Not to pay homage you understand, but because she knew it was important to me.

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Elizabeth Goudge: National Portrait Gallery

National Portrait Gallery