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To the ordinary angels watching over you
The miracle of interlibrary loan has found for me a children's book called The Valley of Song (1951) by Elizabeth Goudge, which I have not read since I was in elementary school and some bastard stole the only copy from the Cambridge Public Library. I remembered it only in fragments—the eponymous valley into which only children can enter, so that the protagonist at one point takes on the years of another's life to allow her inside, where the characters meet with elementals and living figures of the zodiac and the god Vulcan at his forge. (I had serious flashbacks to this book at certain points in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). I wonder if Terry Gilliam did, too.) Something about shipbuilding. Probably lots of Anglicanism, which I wouldn't have noticed at the time. And someone who kept a clipped and ribbon-dressed poodle named Mignon.
I am now two chapters in, and I can report that while there is indeed a fair amount of Anglicanism (and a poodle named Mignon), it has not eaten the story so far; and while I have not yet encountered the constellations, I have met up with a character I remember. Ten-year-old Tabitha Silver is contemplating the stranger who has caught her back from falling into a well after her own reflection, "a disreputable-looking tramp of an ordinary man" who promptly nicknames her Narcissus:
Quite recovered from her fright, and independent now that she was her normal self again, Tabitha slid off the ogre's knee and stood in front of him to have a look at him. His deplorable appearance, she discovered, was due to the fact that he had what she called a Saturday beard. Her father, who had never shaved in his life, had a great black beard that was a delight to behold, and Mr. Peregrine the Master-Builder, who shaved every day, had also a pleasing appearance, but there were other men on the Hard who only shaved on Sunday mornings, and on Saturday afternoons Tabitha did not think they looked their best. The ogre had not cut his wild dark hair for a long while, either, and his lined tanned face had dust in the creases. His clothes were dusty too, torn and stained, but they had been nice clothes once, and he talked as Mr. Peregrine and Parson Redfern talked, not like the gipsies and tinkers who sometimes came to the Hard. His dark eyes were amused, and yet desolate as a lost dog's, and deeply sunken in his head as though he had not had enough to eat lately, yet he had a gold ring on one finger and a torn silk handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket. Altogether Tabitha found him very puzzling.
"What are you?" she asked.
"A complete disaster," he said.
"Oh," said Tabitha. "I don't think I've met one before."
Hello, archetype.
I am now two chapters in, and I can report that while there is indeed a fair amount of Anglicanism (and a poodle named Mignon), it has not eaten the story so far; and while I have not yet encountered the constellations, I have met up with a character I remember. Ten-year-old Tabitha Silver is contemplating the stranger who has caught her back from falling into a well after her own reflection, "a disreputable-looking tramp of an ordinary man" who promptly nicknames her Narcissus:
Quite recovered from her fright, and independent now that she was her normal self again, Tabitha slid off the ogre's knee and stood in front of him to have a look at him. His deplorable appearance, she discovered, was due to the fact that he had what she called a Saturday beard. Her father, who had never shaved in his life, had a great black beard that was a delight to behold, and Mr. Peregrine the Master-Builder, who shaved every day, had also a pleasing appearance, but there were other men on the Hard who only shaved on Sunday mornings, and on Saturday afternoons Tabitha did not think they looked their best. The ogre had not cut his wild dark hair for a long while, either, and his lined tanned face had dust in the creases. His clothes were dusty too, torn and stained, but they had been nice clothes once, and he talked as Mr. Peregrine and Parson Redfern talked, not like the gipsies and tinkers who sometimes came to the Hard. His dark eyes were amused, and yet desolate as a lost dog's, and deeply sunken in his head as though he had not had enough to eat lately, yet he had a gold ring on one finger and a torn silk handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket. Altogether Tabitha found him very puzzling.
"What are you?" she asked.
"A complete disaster," he said.
"Oh," said Tabitha. "I don't think I've met one before."
Hello, archetype.
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Elizabeth Goudge fans unite! I don't think I've met anyone except myself and my mother who's ever read anything by her. She wrote a wonderful book called _The Little White Horse_ which is about a lion and a unicorn and a village called Silverydew and a little girl called Maria, and a black cat who can write pictograms in the ashes. With all the details I've mentioned above, you might think that the book would be cutesy, but it's not. It's awe-inspiring and full of good storytelling.
She also wrote a book called _Linnets and Valerians_ which was so sappy I couldn't manage more than a few pages, so don't know if it improved later on.
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We could form a very small club? I grew up on her, although I haven't read most of her books in years; recently I reapproached The Child from the Sea (1970), for which I have a sort of fondness, although it was clearly written under the influence of some serious, serious crack. (It is a historical novel that features as one of its main characters Theobald Taaffe, an ancestor of mine. Hence the sort of fondness. Unfortunately, it is also a historical novel that applies Goudge's usual patina of spiritual love and purity to the romance of Lucy Walter and Charles II—and her romantic involvement with Theobald—at which point the historical record develops a migraine and has to lie down with a cold compress until the room stops turning white. Did the phrase "merry monarch" mean nothing to her?) The ones I want to re-read are A City of Bells (1936), The Dean's Watch (1960), and The White Witch (1958), which I remember really liking. And Green Dolphin Street (1944), because all I remember about that book is that I read it.
With all the details I've mentioned above, you might think that the book would be cutesy, but it's not. It's awe-inspiring and full of good storytelling.
I have read it! Again, I mostly remember only that I liked it, although the unicorn and the black cat did stay with me; also I seem to have classed it together with Mary Stewart's The Little Broomstick (1971). I'm not sure how that happened.
She also wrote a book called _Linnets and Valerians_ which was so sappy I couldn't manage more than a few pages, so don't know if it improved later on.
I would recommend picking it up again; it's one of the ones that I return to, although I do have to filter out a fair amount of doctrine along the way. But it earned points with me for one character's explanation that there are at bottom three kinds of people in the world: the gold-hearted, the black-hearted, and the silver-hearted. The first two are self-explanatory, but the third are those mortals descended from the fairies—not the flower kind, but what the character calls the Silver People, the undecided angels who neither fell with Lucifer nor stood with Michael in the war in Heaven, and who are still abroad in the world today; and so are their descendants, as quicksilver and oddly gifted and impossible to pin down as their otherworldly ancestors. The character who explains this is, naturally, one of the silver-hearted himself. I think it is no accident that he is the storyteller of the book.
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He was one of Charles II's best buddies when the king was in exile, and after the Restoration he was the first Earl of Carlingford (he was already the second Viscount Taaffe and Baron of Ballymote: these are all no longer extant titles, alas) and Envoy-Extraordinary to the court of Leopold I of Austria, a position for which Charles seems to have selected his friend based almost solely on his drinking capacity—whatever he put away at a state banquet, he was unlikely to forget himself and accidentally sign away the Isle of Wight. There seems also some reason to believe that Lucy Walter's second child was his, which is one of the plot points Elizabeth Goudge hangs her romantic-spiritual angst on; but mostly Theobald fathered a line of Taaffes, some of whom stayed in Ireland, others who anchored in Austria, and eventually there's a von Taaffe Prime Minister of Austria. There are also the Carlingford Papers, about which nobody in my family knew until 2005—a set of correspondences between Theobald Taaffe and Charles II in exile, currently preserved in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. I've been to read them. They are awesome. "My girlfriend's birthday is coming up and I have no money. Also, I can't get anywhere near London right now." "That's all right, Charles, I'm on it." (I paraphrase.) I kind of doubt Elizabeth Goudge read them, though . . .
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You're welcome! It's one of the benefits of having a bizarre last name—it's easy to trace.
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The exception is The Valley of Song, which now seems to be considered too strange for children (and C. S. Lewis isn't?). Perhaps a Christian publisher would be interested in picking that one up.
The encounter with Vulcan is in the version of Munchausen's adventures I have before me (attributed to Raspe):
I keep meaning to post something about Karel Zeman's "The Fabulous Adventures of Baron Munchausen" (1961).
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Thanks! We actually own a fair number of firsts VG+ w (and occasionally w/out) DJ—The Valley of Song was one of the few that I had to get out from the library to read. Off the top of my head, I know we have A City of Bells, Towers in the Mist, The Dean's Watch, The Bird in the Tree, Pilgrim's Inn, The Heart of the Family, Green Dolphin Street, The Little White Horse, Gentian Hill, The White Witch, Linnets and Valerians, The Child from the Sea, and possibly one or two others that I am forgetting, although it may be only that we have doubles of some of the above. It's a little ridiculous. I doubt I would have read so much of her as a child if they hadn't been there handily on the shelf.
The exception is The Valley of Song, which now seems to be considered too strange for children (and C. S. Lewis isn't?).
Yes; I don't see why. Children, meet numinous. It's a recognized genre.
I keep meaning to post something about Karel Zeman's "The Fabulous Adventures of Baron Munchausen" (1961).
I've never heard of it. You should.
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I would have sworn it was the only book of hers I'd read, until you mentioned The Dean's Watch: can I have read that, too? I remember nothing about it...
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What I remember is the eponymous Dean, who is sort of a head case when the story starts—a brilliant scholar appointed to be pastor of a cathedral, married to an indifferent woman whom he loves passionately, and for all his academic prowess not very good at relating to people or making himself available to them—and the jeweler and clockmaker with whom he becomes friends, under whose influence he is much less of a head case by the novel's end. I'm sure there are other threads, but I don't recall them. There may be a romance.
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Nine
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That sounds about right. (Naturally, I remember the head case and not the lovers . . .)
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Nine
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. . . I don't see why. The fact that I have had to strain out a fair amount of God from The Valley of Song last night didn't keep me from enjoying the re-read.
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Sonya, someday (oh, I'm sure it would be too long though) I'd love a reading list from you, a recommendation list I could just print up. I have notes everywhere of books you've quoted or recommended; I found one paper in the bottom of my purse, softened by the crush of CDs and wallet, pencil smeared, with a large Sonya recommends across it and a list of authors, and it waits, it waits. And I tell myself, I want all these things but I have so little time to read anything but work material lately. But a formal list, something to print up and tack up that anyone could read and ...
(sigh) dreaming ....
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Oh, yeah. I think that stayed with me.
But a formal list, something to print up and tack up that anyone could read and ...
Sure: I doubt I remember half the things I've recommended, but if you tell me which ones I have mentioned already, I can certainly try to fill in the gaps.
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I knew I liked you for a reason.
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I have useless talents. : )
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I'm amazed at how many people had this as a touchstone book: I hadn't thought any of my friends read Elizabeth Goudge unless I personally introduced them. It's kind of awesome.
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