A City of Bells: Week 3

Pied Piper, Goudge as Playwright, Beauty & the Bishop's Palace

My copy of A City of Bells out in the snowy garden.

Finding patterns of love during depression

The threads that Goudge has woven in A City of Bells are getting thicker each chapter, drawing us more into the life of Torminster, the good, the precious and the ridiculous. There is loads to adore in these cozy chapters, and it was widely received at the time of publication:

“A City of Bells, her third novel, was published in April 1936. The Methodist Recorder said it was one of ‘those rare novels whose merits deserve announcing to the world with a trumpet voice.’ "¹

In 1936, the abdication of Edward VIII and high unemployment of the Great Depression ruled the day, and yet this book has such light! Goudge wrote her most comforting books at such times, when the dark was darkest she went looking for the light.

“Many of her British readers at least must have been in need of a little charm at that time, for 1936 was not the happiest of years. It began with King George V's death in January, and ended in December with his son Edward VIlI's abdication - the dénouement of what Audrey's mother described in her diary as the awful tension felt throughout the British Empire on account of the King and his "paramour." This crisis alone would be sufficient to create feelings of instability within society - although it was assuaged by the immediate accession of his younger brother Albert, as George VI - but even greater was the worldwide unrest and suffering caused by the appalling unemployment of the Great Depression.”²

Just as Jocelyn came wounded and shiftless to Wells, and as he bore the depression of Ferranti, so too was Goudge’s audience experiencing the shiftlessness of unemployment. In the UK, the male rates of suicide increased during the Great Depression by 30%, peaking in 1934.³ In the US, it increased by 22% in just four years.⁴ Goudge chose to write Ferranti’s play as a great lament during a time when people the world over needed to grieve and remember again what was worth living for.

In chapters 8-11, Goudge brings us the the thing that makes all this struggle bearable: “human love… man’s chief support in his search for the unattainable…” ch 11

Today we will take a look at the Pied Piper, Goudge’s experience as a playwright, searching for Beauty and the life of the Artist, and Christmas at the Bishop’s Palace…

“Henrietta made Ferranti appear as a fairy-tale man, a teller of tales, tall and thin, with a blue shirt and black hair and a white face with lines upon it, a person of such attraction that it seemed little children would follow him to the world's end.

‘Dear me,’ said Grandfather. ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin.'

And it was this thought of the Pied Piper that made him decide that he would go and see Ferranti that night, for Grandfather had always felt sorry for the Pied Piper . . . A bitter man . . . A disillusioned man . . . A man whose faith in human nature had been so shaken that he had disappeared inside a mountain and been no more seen . . . Poor fellow . . . Grandfather would go and see him, he told Henrietta, and if he turned out satisfactory of course Henrietta should continue her friendship with him.” ch 2

The Pied Piper