Chasing the White Deer: Pilgrim's Inn Week 3

Christ symbolism in Elizabeth Goudge's novel Pilgrim's Inn (The Herb of Grace)

A white deer in the woods near our garden in Pennsylvania.

“So we come to the symbolic figure of the White Deer, who is an important character in the story. But you know all about him. He has moved as a figure of heavenly loveliness through the imagination of men and women for so long. Poets have written about him, artists have painted him, sculptors have carved him, down the centuries. His likeness by Pisanello hangs in the National Gallery and greets you in several of the cathedrals of England and France. I possess a box from Germany with his picture painted upon it, and a little carved statue of him, no bigger than a walnut, that is one of my greatest treasures.

He has been so loved by great craftsmen all down the ages that I know it was presumptuous of me to try and write about him. But I could not help it. I did not mean to write about him when I started the book. There was no White Deer in the synopsis that I worked out before I started. He just walked in, upset my plans, made me start the book all over again to accommodate him, and arranged the story about himself just as he wished.”

Elizabeth Goudge, from the April 1948 Wings Literary Guild Review about the writing of Pilgrim's Inn (British title, The Herb of Grace)

The wood and the deer

All throughout this story, the landscape of “Knyghtwood” in the New Forest takes center stages as the Keyhaven Marshes took the stage in the first Eliot story. Goudge tells us that the twins are able to go “right deep in” to the center of the wood, and most of the characters have a sort of personal discovery as they venture into the wood.

We have an excellent explanation of the wood and also the deer by Lucilla in chapter nine:

"To me, dear, a wood is a foreshadowing of the fact of paradise. The trees, the flowers, the birds and animals, they all seem at their happiest in a wood, as though they were redeemed already. Then in a wood they have so much to say. A bird singing to you in a wood, a deer turning his head to look at you and then disappearing through the trees, they lure you on and on, you want to go always a little further- to something some clearing in the wood. It's a queer thing, but when I think of the men and women of genius, artists and saints, I seem to see their figures moving always against the background of a wood."

The British title for the second Eliot book is The Herb of Grace. Here is the red cloth of my edition from 1948.

The white deer

The white deer is an ancient symbol of Christ. Here are a few resources about the white deer in myths and legend: