Customer Reviews

Smoky House

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I first read this book when I was about 16 years of age. It is a lovely story based in the West Country of England, which is a place where the doorway between the world of the 18th Century and that of the world of faery is still open, and the little people can be called upon at night to magically help keep house. The story has everything in it - smugglers, hangings, children on a mission, bad guys, good guys and a stubborn donkey. I loaned my copy of this book (which was a birthday present) to a friend years ago and am now seeking a copy to share with my daughter. I thoroughly recommend it - even if it does persist with silly ideas like babies coming from the cabbage patch!

Why is this lovely children's book out of print?

It was one of my favourites as a child and I read it over and over again. The Little White Horse is thankfully still available, so why not this one? Come on publishers, bring it back!

It is a finely plotted tale of magic, smugglers, evil customs officers, fairies, dogs, children and divine rabbit stew. Goudge paints a picture of a romantic, enchanting world where although there is sadness and pain, joy and hope eventually win the day. Truly magical.

Elizabeth Goudge lived in the West Country, that romantic corner of southern England, beloved by smugglers and Daphne Du Maurier, and many others.

The classic smuggler-thriller film "The Ghost Train" also springs to mind.

This inspired many of Goudge's books, for adults and children.

Arguably her best children's book is "The Little White Horse". But that is another story.

Perhaps her second-best is "Smoky-House" (first published 1940). It is certainly her funniest!

As with "The Little White Horse" it is beautifully illustrated by C. Walter Hodges, who brings a Dickensian visual wit to the work.

With its tale of daring smugglers (Free Traders -- weren't they right, and don't we now live in a free-trade world?), dashing highway men (who is the Man-With-the-Red-Handkerchief?), sneaky spies, solders and revenue men, an inn keeper and his rather wild children, and several sensitive animals, not forgetting the mysterious, usually invisible Good People (similar to leprechauns, perhaps, or hobgoblins, or Shakespeare's and Kipling's Puck), the narratives in "Smoky-House" are a little like "Peter Pan", except that nobody has to sail away to Neverland to find adventure -- it all happens here at, and behind, our front door-step!

Of course it does, because this is the village of Faraway!

The story, at least the smugglers-versus-the-law part of the story, is like a novelised version of the great poem of smuggling,

-- "Five and Twenty Ponies, Trotting Through the Dark,

Brandy for the parson, baccy for the clerk, ...

Watch the wall, my darling, While the gentleman go by ..."

The highway man is a happy Robin Hood figure, a Zorro-masked adventurer: the romantic side of Alfred Noyes' tragic poem "The Highway Man".

But who is he really?

Other parts of the story resemble the worlds-within-worlds of C.S. Lewis's "Narnia", and the invisible presence of immortal powers that guard errant, foolish humans.

The story is also a little like a great Christmas pantomime, a theatrical farce.

Did I say that it is very funny?

And there is lots of hearty home-cooked food. Although the clever dog called Sausage decides to hide when he hears that there are sausages for breakfast, "because he was so dreadfully afraid a mistake might be made" (p 51).

And the children's prayers mostly come true:

Tristram gets a white mouse.

Genefer becomes pretty and nice.

Jane is given a French doll.

But, sadly for Michale, his prayer is too hard to be answered: Jane simply won't be, or can't be (even divinely) made to be good.

It is also a deeply moral story, for we learn that tainted money hurts those who receive it: it causes spots, and makes pigs become ill.

Who is that gallops over the moor on a windy spring evening?

Who throws a small bag of money at the foot of a poor traveller, and says, "Pick this up if you don't mind having spots"?

Did I mention Mathilda the nasty-tempered but golden-hearted donkey, who can only be tamed by the even wilder Jane who makes ear-splitting donkey-controlling noises of cats-on-the-roof, or cork-coming-out-of-bottle, or squeaking-slate-pencil (p 53).

A happy marriage occurs at the end, rather like the marvellous end of "The Little White Horse": this, naturally, is the influence of Jane Austen, and "Pride and Prejudice"! But what could you expect when the oldest of the good (or perhaps not so good: he has been known to poach on the Squire's estates, and he did steal the two dogs, Sausage and Spot) innkeeper, John Treguddick, is seventeen-year old Jessamine, brave and pretty!

And there are poems and songs!

This is a romping good read! Goudge at the top of her form!

John Gough -- Deakin University -- jagough49@gmail.com