A City of Bells: Week 1
Torminster, Jocelyn’s destiny, the Clock, & Shelley’s Ode
“It was a windy Saturday in early November, when the red and yellow leaves were drifting through the streets of the city and torn wisps of grey cloud sailed across the stormy sky behind the Cathedral towers.
Every now and then a scurry of rain swept by on the wind and the cry of the bells as they rang for matins, now loud and now faint as the gusts carried the sound and then dropped it again, was inexpressibly sad…”
🍂 Elizabeth Goudge, A City of Bells
Welcome to our first A City of Bells discussion!
We will be taking a look at chapters 1-4 today, but I know that some will be ahead or behind and that is just fine. How is reading going for you so far? This is my third time leading a group through A City of Bells, and I’m finding as I reread this cozy book that I am savoring it all the more.
We have met so many beautiful, memorable characters already in the first four chapters: tired Jocelyn, generous Grandfather, prim & proper Grandmother, mischievous Hugh Anthony, quiet Henrietta, dear Miss Lavender, the mysterious Gabriel Ferranti, good-looking Felicity Summers, and the eccentric Mrs Jameson.
Torminster is an ideal little town, based on the real little city of Wells, Somerset, UK which was Goudge’s birthplace on April 24th, 1900. We have seen some photos of the real locations as we also read about them through our characters’ eyes: the market and holy well, the Vicar’s Close, the Cathedral, and the town streets. Elizabeth Goudge is somehow able to combine, in all of her novels, both the sublime and the harsh realistic moments of life, and A City of Bells certainly weaves both together into a pleasing whole. The fairytale location of Wells certainly provides a beautiful backdrop for her story of quiet restoration for her hurting characters.
In the first four chapters, we see that after the Vicar’s Close, the Cathedral takes center stage in the narrative, including its carved figures and its famous clock. We also see that Goudge plays the spring and autumn seasons off each other in a dance between death and rebirth. Jocelyn and Henrietta come to Torminster in the spring, and Ferranti is missing, and presumed dead, in the fall. Will the changing seasons of nature and of the church calendar find him back again? We must keep reading to find out.
Today we will take a closer look at Torminster’s location, finding Jocelyn Fordyce’s destiny, the cathedral clock, and Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind.
Glad you can join us!
Where is Torminster?
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