Happy Birthday, Elizabeth!
Celebrating Goudge's 125th birthday
“The children were always allowed to choose what they should do on their birthdays, but (Grandmother) considered Hugh Anthony’s choice this year to be a rather tall order… So Grandmother had written what she hoped were seven very tactful notes. She was experienced in writing tactful notes, for ever since she had married him Grandfather had been distinguished for that eccentricity that so often accompanies saintliness, and his children and grandchildren had inherited the eccentricity, though unfortunately not the saintliness…
Upon this last occasion, she had been so successful that she had made it seem quite delightful that a party of people who would never see seventy again should drive miles through dusty lanes, on a very hot day, to celebrate the birthday of a small boy high up among hills where there was nowhere really comfortable to sit down.”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Henrietta’s House
Blossoms, birds and books for our favorite lady’s 125th birthday today!
I have been thinking for a week about how to honor Miss Goudge today, and I think these three things—blossoms, birds and books—are fitting above many other possible gifts.
Apple Blossoms for her love of the bright immediacy of the open flower, poised to catch the few drops and the light.
Birds for the joyous song of praise that embodies the “glorious music” she loved so well.
And three Books—that she spent her life faithfully to fashion each day through times of war, grief and personal pain—in which she also gave us joy as each contains a party to lighten our hearts.
Join us for a Goudge celebration today, including a few new photos from my recent travels…
Wells, England in 1900
An excerpt from Beyond the Snow by Goudge’s biographer, Christine Rawlins:
“Elizabeth de Beauchamp Goudge was born on 24th April 1900 at Tower House, St. Andrew Street, in Wells. It is England's smallest city: set in the West Country, in the green and rural county of Somerset. With still nine months left of Queen Victoria's reign, she was born into a world of petticoats and bonnets, servants and horse-drawn traffic; but her birth came too at the cusp of a new century, when the massive upheaval of two great wars was soon to change the world. Despite the peaceful security of her ecclesiastical childhood, this little girl would have inner battles of her own to fight too: battles which seemed at times as if they might destroy her.
Her work as a writer was never unaffected by her battles - and yet it has always been described, entirely accurately, as enchanting, happy and delightful. They were labels she acquired early on in her career, with novels which largely looked back to childhood - her own and her mother's - or beyond, into history. Much of her autobiographical writing too focuses on the early years and the picture she paints is idyllic - whether writing for her adult readers or, as here in her preface to A Child's Garden of Verses, for children. She uses the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson to enlarge on her own recollections - what The Joy of the Snow acknowledges as her gratitude that she was born when she was…”
“No child can have lived in lovelier houses than my first two homes, or in a more enchanted city than Wells at the beginning of the century.”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, The Joy of the Snow
“One of my earliest memories of being in a particular place is of being in bed in the night nursery. and looking out of the wide uncurtained window at the sky still full of light...I can see the tree outside the window and my rag doll Violet with the darn on her nose, sitting at the foot of the bed, and outside the window, up in the sky at the top of the hill, there is the steeple of a church silhouetted black against the afterglow, and below it the tumbled uneven roofs of the old houses. The child I remember would watch until the light faded and the walls of the houses were patched with warm squares of lamplight, and then would come the lovely fowering of the lamps as the lamplighter came down the hill. And then presently the stars would come out, "the crowds of the stars.. that glittered and winked in the dark," but their light was no lovelier than the light of the lamps that made a double chain of jewels down the street. It must be wonderful, I would think, to be a lamplighter…”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, The Joy of the Snow
In the intro to the omnibus editions, Three Cities of Bells, Rawlins points out that Goudge recalls:
“leaning against the wall of the cathedral. I must have been very young at the time for it is one of my earliest memories. The cathedral grew up out of our garden like a stone mountain out of a meadow, a vast benign presence brooding over us by night and day, talking to us in bell-music and concerned for our safety.
But I was not in a benign mood as I leaned against its great stone flank, for the devil was in me. It was a warm sunny Good Friday and my request to accompany the adults to the Ihree Hours' service had been categorically refused; which was not surprising as I was not able at this date to compose myself to orderly behaviour even through the short span of going-out-before-the-sermon matins. But I was furious. I had been denied access to my own cathedral, which grew out of my own garden, and I raged against the wall. And then to my graceless condition grace was mercifully given. Over my head was a stained glass window and it mediated to me the sound of distant music. They were singing far away inside the cathedral. A small thing, perhaps, to leave behind such an indelible impression but the experience was indescribably lovely. To me this was not earthly music. It melted the rage out of me and filled me up instead with awe and longing. It was then, I think, that cathedrals became to me the symbolic presences that they have been ever since...
Beside the Cathedral, under an archway, a gate opened into a small graveyard and from there another archway led into the cloisters... Whenever I liked I could run through the green garth to the cloisters, and I often did. I liked being there alone and gazing out through the arches at the central square of green grass that seemed to breathe out cool quietness as a well does. Years later, when I lived at Oxford, I would escape in the same way to the small cloister at Magdalen College. It had the same sort of stillness.
From the Wells cloisters steps led down to a place of grass and tall trees, and beyond was the outer wall of the Bishop's Palace, and the drawbridge over the moat...”1
“‘I'lI tell you all about it while we get ready for the party we're going to have,' said Maria…
Then they set to work. Marmaduke had been baking cakes and cutting sandwiches all the morning. Now, attended by Zachariah and Serena, he was arranging them on plates and applying a few last decorative touches. Wrolf, a large basket held in his mouth, helped Maria and Robin carry all the geraniums from Marmaduke's little room to the house, and Periwinkle from the doorway gave her moral support. Wiggins, when Marmaduke and Zachariah were not looking, stole a sugar cake and ate it, but his expression afterwards was so seraphic that no one suspected him.
There were many more geraniums than Maria had realized. She and Robin filled the parlour with them, putting them all along the window-seat so that from outside in the rose-garden the window should look a blaze of pink, and they filled the great hall with them, and the windows of Maria's tower room as well. And then after that they helped Marmaduke Scarlet set out the tea on the hall table. It looked wonderful when it was all put ready..”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse
Bells & Tulips in the Bishop’s Palace Garden from my visit this April:
Happy birthday to our favorite lady, Elizabeth Goudge!
How will you celebrate Elizabeth Goudge’s birthday today? Love to hear!
Getting ready for May!
“The spring will come with celandines and white violets in the lanes, and then the late spring with bluebells and campion and the wistaria coming out. And I shall learn the spring by heart, and then the summer, and I'll learn the bells and birdsong by heart, and the way the moonlight moves on …
Also this month, the 41sth Anniversary of Goudge’s death:
Find out more about the newest print of The Joy of the Snow here:
Read more about Elizabeth Goudge in this photo biography post:
Goudge’s garden at Rose Cottage:
Beyond the Snow by Christine Rawlins
*Amazon Affiliate links are included in this newsletter. I make a few cents per recommendation, each of which I hope will be helpful to you!
What a lovely tribute. I enjoyed reading this in bed before I got up. Thank you.
Happy Birthday, EG! What a lovely read. We LOVED our visit to Wells last year. So glad you enjoyed ☺️