Customer Reviews

World of Elizabeth Goudge

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Elizabeth Goudge's own autobiographical reflective memoir "The Joy of Snow" is a joy. We would expect nothing less from Goudge herself -- she is a unique writer.
But it is, sadly, not a full autobiography.
Many things we would like to know about are simply absent.
So far this is the best we have that might almost be a BIOGRAPHY of Goudge. But biography it is not.

It is written as, simultaneously"
-- a review of events in Goudge's life;
-- details of her books (as these details relate to places that Goudge lived, or events in her own life or her wider family's lives); and
-- the searching out by Sylvia Gower of the places Goudge lived in and drew upon for the settings of her stories.

Imagine Gower's book as a vivid, personal TV travelogue based on the life and works of a great author.
Naturally it touches on the outline of the author's life.
But it is also Gower's account of her search for Goudge's world, and a full biography waits to be written.
(Alas, that Goudge arranged for her companion to burn most of her papers before she died!)

If you know any of Elizabeth Goudge's books you know they almost always have an evocative, richly imagined setting.
We would expect they may actually be derived from real places, and indeed they are. Where? What do they look like?
This, among other points in Goudge's life in houses and places around Britain, is Gower's major focus.

Where, for example, is Torminster, the cathedral town of the trilogy "City of Bells", "Harriet's House" (also known as "The Blue Hills"), and "Sister of the Angles"?
Where is the original of Gentian Hill? And the ruined chapel?
Or Smokey House?
Or the castle of the Black men of "The Little White Horse"? Or Moonacre Manor?
Or the Hard where the great ship is built in "The Valley of Song"?
Or the castle on the hill?
Or the great house Damerosehay?

Delightfully, where Sylvia Gower travelled, finding Goudge locales, there are photographs.

We are given a good explanation of the fascinating Little Things, bequeathed to Elizabeth Goudge by her Guernsey grandmother, and featuring in "City of Bells", and, especially, "The Scent of Water". (Alas, there is no photo of the Little Things.)

Gower also includes "Easter in the Ward", a poem by Goudge based on time spent in a hospital ward in her old age, after falling and injuring her leg in 1978.
This poem first appeared in a small collection of Goudge's writing (on religious themes), "A Vision of God", edited by Christine Rawlins (Spiure, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1990). Let me add some detail on Rawlin's anthology.
Goudge wrote poems and songs that are included in some of her books as part of the action, or as prefatory "odes" before the story itself.
These were collected in "Songs and Verses" (Duckworth, London, 1948) -- long out of print!
But the existenceof these published poems and songs suggested that perhaps there was also an unpublished body of poetry waiting to be discovered among Goudge's papers.
Christin Rawlins may not have found them all. But she has found some, for which we can only be deeply grateful.
Her selection includes, "The Dream", "The Hummingbird's Nest", "Easter in the Ward", "Old Age", "To Our Plum Trees in Winter" (alluding to an unnamed Old Master painting of a dead body behind which Christ stands, holding a baby), "Rainbow in Wales", and "Our Lady" -- twenty pages, seven poems.

Sylvia Gower is to be highly commended, and profoundly thanked, for creating this extremely informative and helpful discussion of the life and times and works of Elizabeth Goudge!
Indispensible! (if only there were an Index!)
John Gough -- Deakin University -- jagough49@gmail.com