Smoky House: Week 2

“When our bodies are fresh and vigorous, we have faith in all sorts of beautiful things, and when we are tired we think that after all perhaps it was just a lot of nonsense.

At this point a good meal is what is required. Michael, a sensible little boy, ran as fast as he could to Smoky-House kitchen and rabbit stew.”

🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Smoky House

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. They fled to Devon, as it was a happy place of memories for Ida and her husband, and they started to build a cottage that they could not yet pay for.

However, Goudge had already began The Bird in the Tree, and:

“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.”¹

Smoky House was be published in 1940, the same year as The Bird in the Tree.

Join us today to chat about chapters 6-9 of Smoky House as we take a look at the actually file room copy from Coward-McCann in New York, and talk about the Good People….

The US File Copy from Coward-McCann