Elizabeth Goudge is a 1940's British writer whose books look like something I should be reading. They also look like no one has taken them out of the library in a long time. Maybe she's like an undiscovered Barbara Pym and I could have a happy time reading through her ouevre, I innocently thought. Like back in the first flush of excitement when I discovered Pym and there were like 14 more to go through. So I grabbed The Castle on the Hill and began reading. In the first frenzy of my discovery I even ordered a book of hers off Amazon, The Scent of Water. All boded well.
Alas, however, she should not be dragged forth into the next century with Barbara Pym and Angela Thirkell, let her stay in 1940's Britain where a perfectly noble and giving spinster Miss Brown can offer the elderly Mr.Birley a proposal to be his housekeeper, nurse or wife or all three, "whichever you like" when she finds out the owner of the castle where she is housekeeper is going to be living in assisted living in an apartment for the rest of his life after a bomb and taxes split the castle into bits. Instead of gratitude, he reacts with horror '...astonishment, bewilderment, mirth, dismay, and then again overwhelming the other emotions, horror.' The horror is due to the fact that she is from a different class. Miss Brown sees the horror in his face and gracefully allows him to wiggle out. He is allowed to retire unsullied by her lower caste to be tended to by a manservant while Miss Brown goes on to form an alliance with a homeless street musician who USED to be a gentleman, but was also a JEW (frequent references to the King of Israel in his presence). Not sure what social class this puts him in, but it must be ok since they get to live in the carriage house with the two absurdly named war orphans Moppet and Poppet and he takes in pupils and Miss Brown continues smocking their dresses.
Elizabeth Goudge, you can stay put.
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