Where is Damerosehay? (And how do you say it?)

The Bird in the Tree, Goudge Read-along October 2023

Lovely photo of Keyhaven from the travel journal of Andrew Walks

“These marshes were streaked with color like a painter's palette. There was the gold of the rice grass and the mauve of the sea asters and sea lavender, and the pools and channels that at high tide gave back the blue or flame or primrose of the sky above them, and at low tide flung back the light from the smooth mud like polished surfaces of steel and silver. Gorse grew upon dry patches of the marsh, and red sorrel and golden saxifrage, and the glasswort, a spongy sea-weedy plant that could take every shade of color from crimson to deep purple. Patches of bright green grass appeared now and again, with plovers sitting on them, and rushes bent in the wind with a soft cool sound that was indescribably peaceful.”

✨Elizabeth Goudge, The Bird in the Tree

I hope you are all enjoying being lost in the autumnal brilliance of The Bird in the Tree this week as our own leaves turn color and the sun seems more golden low in the sky (of the northern hemisphere, anyway). The weather for us had turned so warm that I was able to eat my lunch yesterday on the porch and see the asters and Japanese Anemones in our garden as I read. It was one of those magical moments that somehow only a Goudge book can provide.

Setting for The Bird in the Tree

If you live in the UK then you are no doubt a little familiar with the marshy southern coast of Britain, if not from experience then from the tales of friends. As a landlocked continental reader from the US, I have to picture the far away coasts of Virginia which I have not visited for several years, or the more local marshy areas and open fresh water of Lake Erie, which have become favorite spots for my family in the past few years.

Wherever you may be, dear reader, I hope that you have had the experience at one time or another of the way the wild wind comes across the water at such locations, and how the sea birds swirl overhead. Goudge has gone out of her way in the beginning chapters of The Bird in the Tree to capture all of the atmosphere of such places, and especially of her beloved Keyhaven Marshes.