The Mystery of the Sea with Dr. Jeremy Taylor

The Child from the Sea, August 2023 Goudge Read-Along

Photo of the sea from Visit Pembrokeshire

(Lucy) told (Dr Taylor) she thought she had come from the sea and he agreed that indeed she had.

"The sea is a picture of the divine mystery from which we came and that laps for ever on the shores of our being, and sounds about us when the storms come. The mystery is within us also and in all that lives, even in the bodies of the small fishes in the sea-pools, the mystery of the being of God. There is no creature that breathes but the breathing is the rhythm of his love, no flower that glows with any other light but his, no voice that speaks in kindness but the cadence of the compassion is his own.”

💙Elizabeth Goudge, The Child from the Sea, book III, chapter 2

The real Jeremy Taylor, 1613-1667

Photo from Britannica.com of Dr Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor was a cleric in the Church of England, close friend of William Laud (the ill-fated Archbishop of Canterbury under Charles I) and popular devotional author who was known as the “Shakespeare of the divines.” He was later venerated by the Anglican Church, and so Goudge would have grow up celebrating his feast day, as well as reading his writings. The historical Taylor did indeed live at Golden Grove with Lord and Lady Carbery as Goudge suggests. His book Golden Grove, a Manual of Daily Prayers and Litanies (1655) is said to have brought the Welsh estate added fame, and Goudge could not let her tale go by without including one of his prayers.

Britannica.com reports of Dr Jeremy Taylor :

“By 1655 he had written his enduring works: The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650) and The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651). These devotional handbooks were written to help members of the Church of England who were deprived of a regular ministry during the disturbances of the Commonwealth. The books’ beauty and spiritual insight made them popular with all denominations, however, and their influence extended to the 18th-century Methodist John Wesley.”

Here is a bit more that will be interesting to readers of The Child from the Sea about Jeremy Taylor, his relationship to Charles I and his stay at Golden Grove:

Wikipedia on Jeremy Taylor and Golden Grove

Taylor as a Confidant for Lucy

As Goudge prepares Lucy to leave Wales for The Hague, she could not resist giving these two historical characters a touchpoint in her historic fiction. Just after the excerpt above about Lucy’s sea origins, Goudge follows it up with this delightful conversation: