Intro to Smoky House
Elizabeth Goudge's Devon Adventure
"Everything I see makes me want to write a story... In our village there is an old smuggling inn called Smoky House that demanded I should write a children's book about it...”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, West Country Magic magazine
Welcome to our Goudge Readalong of Smoky-House!
Smoky House was Goudge’s very first published children’s book.
In 1939 Britain, everyone’s life was up in the air, but Goudge’s was particularly tenuous. Her father had died in April 1939, and like Jane Austen and her mother, Goudge and her mother Ida were left without home or income.
For those of you who read Gentian Hill with us in January, we are right back into the same setting. Faraway is the same location as Gentian Hill village, and contains the same Smoky-house Inn. In this fairytale though, the Inn takes center stage!
Join us today for Goudge’s story of finding a new home in a Faraway land…
Coast of Devon
Elizabeth and Ida Goudge fled to the coast of Devon, as it was a happy place of memories for Ida and her late husband. There they started to build a cottage that they could not yet pay for. But Elizabeth Goudge had already began The Bird in the Tree, and she wrote in a letter that:
“By the time spring came [The Bird in the Tree] was finished and in sheer relief I wrote [Smoky House] for Nanny who had been toiling in the Ark's kitchen while I toiled in my bedroom. Now, using part of my mother's gift from my father's pupils, my own savings, and with two books written, there would be enough... to pay for the cottage.”
Dedicated to Nannie
Goudge included a poem in her dedication to her beloved nanny:
DEDICATED TO NANNIE
In from the winter dusk, and the chill air
Of the frost-bound garden, the children come
To Nannie sewing in the nursery chair,
Nannie who to her nurselings is the sum
Of all that makes up warmth and tenderness,
Kind patience and the love that never fails.
In this enchanted fire-lit hour they press
About her, clamouring for the bed-time tales
Of gnomes and fairies, and the angels' wings
That shield the children's beds from midnight fears.
Clearer the picture of those gentle things
Than harsher memories of later years.
Easy to grope back through the shadowed ways
To Nannie and the love of nursery days.
Tragically, after Nanny had come briefly to aid Ida and Elizabeth in their transition to Devon, she went back to family in Bath where she died during a German air raid.
Setting: Devon, April 1821
Another similarity with Gentian Hill is the time period, with this tale following closely after its point in history. Smoky House is set just after the Napoleonic Wars, just as the threat of invasion has passed:
"Bony will get you, Miss," Will Pooley cautioned her.
"He won't" said Jane. "He's dead."
Jessamine sighed. The French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, who for years had kept Europe groaning under the burden of war, had recently died after a long captivity, and though Europe as a whole was thankful to be free of him he was much missed by those mothers, elder sisters and governesses who were responsible for the upbringing of the young. He had been a wonderful bogey with which to frighten little children into good behaviour, and as such Jessamine missed him dreadfully. He had been especially useful in the west and south of England, where for years they had lived in feat of invasion by the French. "Bony will have you if you aren't good!" had been a remark that had always reduced Michael and Tristram and sometimes even Jane, to order…
Devon magic
Just as in her adult novel, Gentian Hill, Goudge includes all of the beauty and magic of the West Country into her fairytale. In fact, one might say that the fairy stories and folklore take center stage, as well as the beauty of the place:
“On this particular evening Jessamine had already lighted the candles, but the door was still wide open showing the lovely evening sky with its shimmering star. It had deepened now to a royal blue, queen's blue, the blue of the Madonna's cloak, very deep in the east where night was walking towards them over the sea. Her coming had already stilled the waves, the blackbirds' song and even the calling of the owls.
The stillness was so wonderful that even as they turned in fear towards the door their fear disappeared. Their earlier still ecstasy had been a very earthly one, occasioned by the smell of rabbit stew; this was another sort, a heavenly sort. It came, Genefer was sure, from that door in heaven set so twinkling wide…”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Smoky House
Children & Animals as the Heroes
The moral of this fairytale is to always trust the children and animals to have more sense than the adults! We will talk more about why that seemed a pressing moral for Goudge when she was writing this story in 1939.
“Jessamine sent the other children scampering up the stairs to bed; but this was not the hardship that it sounds, for the stairs led up out of the kitchen and ended in the gallery… so the children only had to leave their bedroom door open to hear everything that was going on in the room below. This made life very interesting for them, for they heard all the village gossip and gained a very thorough knowledge of all that was going on, a knowledge that often enabled them to put out a guiding hand and lead the village out of the occasional difficulties that even in Faraway sometimes arose, back into the peace and prosperity that were its natural element.
For children, of course, are much more sensible than grown-ups; and dogs more sensible than children.
If you don't believe this you've only got to look out on the world as it is now, managed by grown-ups. It's difficult to see how they could have made a worse mess of it than they have done. It wouldn't be like this if children or dogs had been in command from the start.”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Smoky House
Fun and antics
Smoky-House is a rollicking read! The animals are all here to save the family this time, with a bit of help from the fairy people who we also will encounter in The Valley of Song. It’s a mad dash through West Country lore—fun and lighthearted.
Warning: for best enjoyment remember to be light of heart as you read this one!
Goudge wrote Smoky House just before Henrietta’s House, and years before her other childhood favorites. It is best enjoyed as the fairytale that it is.
Get your copy
You can find Smoky House in paperback and/or hard cover at: Blackwells, Amazon, EBay, Thrift Books or Abebooks, or Girls Gone By Publishers.
You are welcome to read at whatever pace you wish! But for our discussions we will cover:
Week 1: Chapters 1-5
Week 2: Chapters 6-9
Week 3: Chapters 10-13
Week 4: Chapters 14-18
Thank you for the pictures of Devon and background. I have been to many places in the U.K. but not to Devon. I have enjoyed watching Escape to the Country and the many shows they had on people wanting to move to Devon. It is so beautiful, who could blame them? Several of the Masterpiece Theater productions have featured Devon as well. If I remember correctly, I think that Sanditon was set there. Your pictures make the story come alive!
Never read it all the way through, maybe it's time