The Scent of Water: Week 3

Doorways with Elizabeth Goudge

The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge in our Entry Garden

“I like old things,” (Edith said), “like the tree in Nightingale Wood, the one by the ruins of Fox Barton, where the well is."

Mary was delighted. One of the joys of being with children was that in their company one recaptured the sense of the strange and the flavor of the unknown…

"Is Nightingale Wood the one beyond the Dog and Duck?" Mary asked.

"Yes, but Fox Barton is at the other end of it. The way to Fox Barton is down Ash Lane. You know Ash Lane because the door in your vegetable garden leads into it." It was the door through which Mrs. Baker came and went but Mary had been so busy that she had actually never explored beyond it…

🌿The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge

Note: Our live book chat for The Scent of Water will be on Wednesday, May 28th at 3pm EST. Hope you can make it!

Doorways to the unknown

All through Goudge’s stories, you find places where the characters suddenly find magical places through the common doors in front of them. This happens not just in her children’s fantasy, like The Little White Horse, but also in her historical fiction which is set in real, sometimes gritty, real life.

In Towers in the Mist, young Faithful Crocker finds the rainbow and a pot of gold in the dirty basements of Oxford, as well as the gift of faith.

In Pilgrim’s Inn (aka The Herb of Grace), the twins find the hidden chapel in the pantry cupboard, obscured by several coats of old wall paper.

In The Dean’s Watch, which we will read in November, the Dean finds the mystery of faithfulness, clocks, and time hidden behind the metal cover on his pocket watch and Isaac finds his faith behind the cathedral doors that he passed all his life.

Fiddle head unfurling near our bird bath at Havenwood.

From common places

The Scent of Water is no different. Here the doorway to Mary’s mystery begins in the most common of places: her own vegetable patch. She and Edith must have walked by the seed trays, the compost pile, and the snail-eaten lettuces.

It was here in the most common of places that Goudge chose to have Mary walk into her dream (half-awake no less) and find what she was looking for in the most unexpected of places: a ruined house, a well, and an old woodland.

“…As they walked under the apple trees in the kitchen garden to the door in the wall Mary did not tell Edith that she had not yet found time to open it and go through it to what lay beyond…

Mary was ashamed of the procrastination of her advancing years... It was an inwardly humbled woman who preceded Edith into Ash Lane…”

🌿The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge

Join us for a closer look at chapters 9-12 for The Scent of Water…

Door to an inner world