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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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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.