Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge (1948)

Pilgrim’s Inn (also published as The Herb of Grace) is the second book in the Eliot Family Trilogy. Its best to read it after The Bird in the Tree as most of the characters are introduced in the first book and the central theme continues into the second book. I read both books one after the other.

The Bird in the Tree introduces the Eliot family and the history of Lucilla, the matriarch of the family, who purchases the house at Damerosehay, which she intends to establish as an inheritance and a place of refuge and beauty for her grandchildren.
Lucilla had very noble intentions but when her beloved and favourite grandson, David, entered into a relationship that was the antithesis of all she had planned and hoped for, she took some matters into her own hands.
The Bird in the Tree has the rumblings of WWII in the background and ends with on a shaky note regarding this relationship. Pilgrim’s Inn picks up the pieces at the end of the war and continues to work through the ramifications of the various individual decisions.

What I liked about this book:

• The setting (the coastal area of eastern England) and the descriptions of the countryside
• The theme - a moral dilemma; the choice between feelings/emotions and duty
•       Goudge doesn't offer quick fixes. Her characters feel pain and hopelessness but there is always a redemptive pathway
• The sensitivity shown by the author to the effects of marital breakdown on children
• Goudge’s lovely reflective writing:

‘Hers was the unconscious tyranny of inexorable great expectations.’

‘She knew how worrying, even how agonising sometimes, the questions of grownups can be to children whose capacity for experience so far outstrips their capacity for talking about it. And in afterlife it it’s the other way round...adult and educated folks seemed to experience so little of any consequence and yet to say such a vast and wearisome amount about it.’

Some Characters:

Lucilla, a grandmother who was quite manipulative at times. Yes, she loved her family, but her actions were often quite selfish towards some of them, especially her unmarried daughter, Margaret. I cringed a few times to read how she advanced her own (noble as they were) plans. She was a praying woman but perhaps felt the Lord needed some help from her!

Hilary, the eldest of Lucilla’s five children - a bachelor and a parish priest - on the other hand, was not in any way manipulative. Placid, patient, wise, utterly unselfconscious, utterly happy, much loved and popular within his parish. He did know when to speak out and did so when the time came.

Annie-Laurie, a gifted young lady with a dark past and a secret she dare not disclose.

Nadine, a beautiful woman who made a decision to put duty before passion but is now faced with working this out in daily life.

‘In even the smallest of selfless decisions there is a liberation from self...’

David, a young, sensitive man devastated by loss and only capable of ‘tattered loving.’

'Till whatsoever star that guides my moving
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tattered loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;
Till then not lift my head where thou mayest prove me.'
- William Shakespeare

Pilgrim’s Inn is a slow, worthwhile read; descriptive and thoughtful with a satisfying outcome. I haven’t yet read the last book in the trilogy but this one didn’t leave me with a sense of unfinished business so unless the book falls into my hands I probably won’t read it.
Or should I? Have you read the last book in this trilogy? I’d be interested to know whether it really adds anything more to the story.



Linking to 2020 Back to the Classics: Classic with a Place in the Title

The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge (1963)

‘At least there is hope for a tree:
    If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
    and its new shoots will not fail.
Its roots may grow old in the ground
    and its stump die in the soil,
yet at the scent of water it will bud
    and put forth shoots like a plant.’

The Book of Job

About 20 years after the end of World War II, Mary Lindsay, a single middle-aged woman living and working in London, received word that her older cousin, whom she had only met once, had died and Mary had inherited her home in the country.
Making a sudden decision to leave her prestigious job, her friends, and her future plans, Mary went to live in her new home. She had read Jane Austen’s books and decided that she would like to look at the few last fragments of Austen’s England before they disappeared forever - at least, that is the explanation she gave for her for her resolution, but deep down she knew there were other reasons.
Mary had led an interesting life and worked in the Admiralty during the war. It was there that she met her fiancée but he had been killed a week before they were to be married. With her trademark resilience, she poured herself into work with the Red Cross in Germany after the war.
Now, twenty years later she has made a life-changing decision that will help her to understand the past and gain insight into the lives of others that have touched her life in some way.

The Scent of Water is quite a lovely story with an unusual protagonist. Elizabeth Goudge really excelled in her characterisations and this book is peopled with some interesting and loveable characters. It’s so good to read a book and connect with the people in it. Her characters are always flawed people but she never leaves them without hope and one of the attractions of her writing is her gift of bringing these persons to a better place than they were at the beginning.

“People talk a lot of ballyhoo about suffering improving you. I should say that what it does is to underline what you were before...No, I can’t blame what I am on the war.”

“I deceived you and deception is stealing because it takes away the truth...”

The library catalogue of this book classifies it under ‘Domestic Fiction,' amongst other categories  (e.g. ‘Retired teachers,’ ‘Country Life’ and ‘Self-actualisation’ ), a description I haven't seen before but I like it. It could be interpreted as dull or prosaic, but in Goudge’s hands it is charming and filled with wisdom and insight.
The author weaves a domestic story that introduces the reader to a whole village and its doings. She delves beneath the surface and gets to the heart of things, revealing heartbreak, disappointments and difficulties but always with the purpose of redemption.

‘If anyone had asked her what she meant by integrity she would not have been able to tell them but age had seen it once like a picture in her mind, a root going down into the earth and drinking deeply there. No one was really alive without that root.’

Mary’s cousin kept diaries over the years and in them she reveals her struggle with mental illness but also her belief that she was meant to ‘build something up for somebody, make something to put into the hands of another’ when she died. That ‘other’ was her young cousin, Mary, whose father had brought her with him to visit her many years earlier.

The quote at the beginning of this post is from the Book of Job in the Old Testament of the Bible. It highlights a theme that runs through the story and involves the various characters.
I did think that the story felt a little unfinished. There were some loose ends and I would have liked to have seen some of the situations more fully resolved but it was very endearing, nevertheless.



Linking to 2020 Back to the Classics: Classic with Nature in the Title

Reading, Thinking, & Domesticity #5

Sometimes it's helpful having your birthday at the end of the year. It acts like a 'pause and reflect' moment before heading into a new year. On my birthday in December, my husband gave me a card with a list of things that happened in 2018:

*  Our third child got married
*  Our second grandchild (a boy this time) was born
*  Our first grandchild turned 1 & we started looking after her one day a week
*  One of our sons completed his plumbing apprenticeship
*  Another son had a major job change
*  Moozle, our youngest, became a teenager & had her Grade 7 Cello exam which she passed with honours
*  We did some home renovations and slept on camp mattresses on a tiled floor for 10 weeks. I ended up with a compressed nerve in my neck and had to have a few weeks of physio.
*  Moozle and I did a 1,600 km (1000 mile) round road trip together

He didn't write it on the card but this happened just before Christmas:

*  After having worked as a contractor for over two years with a company they decided to put my husband 'officially in the system.' This required a police check.
Said police check came back and he was called into the HR office and told to leave immediately as the police check showed a list of serious criminal offences dating back about 7 years, including time spent in prison.
My husband asked for details, said he'd never been to court (except to serve on a jury!) let alone prison, but they refused to give him any information.
He was told he could only appeal via the third party company who conducted the police check. This company sent him emails, which he didn't get because the company he works for locked him out of their system.
Eventually he received a copy of the report and it showed he was working at his present employment while supposedly serving a prison term! Mmmm. Knee jerk reaction from HR who didn't bother reading the report properly.
Ten days later, with no pay during that time, after much to-ing and fro-ing with his employer and the third party who had conducted the police check, he received word that he didn't have a criminal  record after all. No apology or acknowledgement from the third party that he had been falsely accused.

And, yes, he was compensated - well, his company paid him for the time he had off, humbly apologised etc. Most of his fellow workers were appalled and angry and a couple of them knew of others in similar circumstances & they weren't surprised.

This was a very interesting experience in light of our current climate here with the Government's latest Encryption Laws and privacy. We were privy to the details of another man's criminal record, and my husband was automatically deemed to be guilty and had no right to offer a defence to his employer.
It also made us realise how difficult it must be for anyone trying to find work after serving time in gaol.
Francis Schaeffer wrote these words in 1976 and I think they are relevant even more today:

'I believe the majority of the silent majority, young and old will sustain the loss of liberties without raising their voices as long as their own life-styles are not threatened. And since personal peace and affluence are so often the only values that count with the majority, politicians know that to be elected they must promise these things. Politics has largely become not a matter of ideals - increasingly men and women are not stirred by the values of liberty and truth - but of supplying a constituency with a frosting of personal peace and affluence. They know that voices will not be raised as long as people have these things, or at least an illusion of them.' 

World Watch List - a list of the 50 most dangerous countries for Christians. India has recently made it into the top ten on this list.

Children & dumbed down reading:

'50 years ago, parents read things to children that children could not read themselves, that were not directed primarily at the senses, and that contained deep formal and material lessons for the children...But it has never been a good thing to indulge the senses as an end in themselves. The senses have always tried to dominate the intellect and to distract us from what matters more.'

A Culture of Reading has some excellent reading suggestions.

An newspaper article I read last month:

Listening

Nicholas Clifford, Professor Emeritus at Middlebury Liberal Arts College in Vermont, USA, is a Librivox narrator I've listened to and I've enjoyed everything he's done. Fortunately, he has 79 solo recordings, many of them classics.  

The Vanishing Man by R. Austin Freeman (1862-1943) is an interesting mystery/crime novel with a focus on Ancient Egyptian artifacts and practices.

Many of Freeman's books feature the medical/legal forensic investigator, Dr John Thorndyke.  The Vanishing Man was published in 1911 and was also published as The Eye of Osiris.

My ongoing Hexie Quilt project that's taking me forever. Making progress, though.

Sisters