Merry Festive Reading

 

Merry festive reading to you!

Do you have any books on your reading list for this time around Christmas? Ones that you want to read - or re-read each year? 

Still on my list I'd like to re-read in the coming week or two include A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, of course, the absolute classic and the book that is credited with infusing into culture the ways we celebrate Christmas, even today. Also, The Nutcracker by E.T.A. Hoffmann. Last year was the first year I read The Nutcracker, and I think it will be one that I want to read each year.

Until those books are re-visited, here are the ones I have already been reading. I embracing the season with the good books that bring me right into the snowy and wintry landscapes, cheer, and mystery.

Jane Austen's Christmas - The Festive Season in Georgian England, edited by Maria Hubert

Traditions from the time of Jane Austen, with excerpts from her novels, her letters to and from family,  recipes, poems, and other letters and diary entries to get a sense of that time period and how they celebrated. Games families played were quite different from what we might consider today - such as apple bobbing. Isn't that a Halloween thing? Recipes are also quite interesting to read (and not try out, I am not so brave).

I loved learning more about the Twelfth Night Festivities, such traditions we do not even talk about today - from the last evening of Christmas to the Feast of Epiphany (when the wise men visited). Would you like to play Snapdragon, which involved popping raisins into your mouth from a bowl of flaming brandy?  You'd have a bowl flaming and reach your hands in to grab a raisin. Yes, this was a children's game. Popular from the sixteenth century. Maybe after you have some bullet pudding. 

Winters in the World, Eleanor Parker

I am re-reading this one, all the Winter sections, as it does travel through the seasons from the Anglo-Saxon world. It's absolutely delightful and fascinating to me. The literature, poetry, beliefs, traditions, and language. Winter is an invading force that comes quickly into their world, taking the world by storm, so to speak. The language finds beauty in all things about the turning year. We see the seasons changing and the importance of how it shapes their world. In a time that depending on the weather for survival, harvests, and livelihood, they paid such close attention to the gifts of each season.

After (All Saint's Day) comes Winter's Day, far and wide,
six nights later, and seizes sun-bright autumn
with its army of ice and snow,
fettered with frost by the Lord's command,
so that the green fields may not longer stay with us,
the ornaments of the earth.

The Wood at Midwinter, Susanna Clarke

Susanna's newest book, a short story beautifully illustrated. A fantasy tale inspired from myths and stories of saints. It is another crossover kind of story, like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, where the real world and the world of fairy intertwine, and characters cross over. Strange indeed, and though provoking. A young girl gives up everything to raise a baby cub. In doing so, attempts to heal a brokenness between the natural world and man.

As Susanna writes in her afterword "In my own writing I had become fascinated by characters who are bridges between different worlds, between different states of being, characters who feel compelled to try and reconcile the unreconcilable."

The World of Xmas

 

We live in a world of Xmas.

Once upon a time in a parallel world imagined by C.S. Lewis (or simply an observance of our own world), we lived a preparatory period of 50 days leading up to a festival of Xmas. This festival made out to be a fun and happy time, but had requirements like filling the shops to buy gifts and cards for every person you know, or half-know, weary and exhausted, but as part of the sale adverts you must follow the trends and get gifts that are popular and wanted by all. Which means fighting crowds at the shops. It's a whole rushed experience because you are pushed around the long halls of shopping malls in pursuit of the sale.

This means, of course, you're quite emptied in spirit and in wallet, and have loads on credit cards to foster such purchases, and as we approach the main event, you're exhausted and irritated, so you spend half the day of the event in bed and/or your pajamas, trying to recover from overeating, overspending, and overdrinking. But that's all part of the event festivities encouraged.

Yet another event, a holiday is celebrated the same day, called Christmas and it is kind of the opposite of Xmas, in which the folks who celebrate wake early, dress nicely, and attend service joy-filled and focused on worship of one they call Creator. A story is told of a baby born and the young mother is seen as blessed above all women, yet she's in a dirty barn with her baby and receives unexpected visitors who travel from afar and have vastly different approaches to living. They want to bring gifts or sit there in adoration of the baby. The light shines brightly on Christmas as the Light has come into the world.

Yet, collide these two events do, on the same day. One affects the moment, a fleeting time of pleasure followed by regret of overindulging in various ways, and the other is never lacking and always filled to the brim with an everlasting joy not able to be purchased with coupons clipped. With one, we are glad when its over as we are already wearied of all the "things" and seek to shut it all away as soon as possible. While the other seeks to celebrate for a few weeks after the official event, seeing how it is possible to accept a gift that adds joy more and more the longer you follow. A weariness doesn't come. The light doesn't fade.

For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left. 

"Xmas and Christmas" by C.S. Lewis

Family, Freindship, and Jane Austen

 

She professed a love of Books without Reading, was Lively without Wit, and generally good humoured without Merit.

- from "Kitty, or the Bower" by teenage Jane Austen

The air in our region is sun-filled and chilly. The bite in the wind is delightful, perfectly Autumnal and welcome to usher in the season of gatherings and holidays. I don a sweater and smile. Wearing layers and sweaters and jackets makes me so happy. I look for time to take walks when the weather is like this. Eager to enjoy the best time of year in these parts. I make lattes and endless cups of tea with weather so charming. As we prepare ourselves for the holidays, and the coming Thanksgiving festivities with family this week, I have been deeply amused by some of my reading. Who doesn't need some amusement? 

You know the name of Jane Austen. How much have you read of hers? I daresay you haven't dipped into her teenage writings. Here we get a taste of what she was playing around with. Language, family dynamics,  social drama, escapades. Jane is a great source for us of the domestic life around 1800. She often wrote a tale for a family member, a brother, niece, etc. They all allude to jokes and are meant for that person. In these stories often set-up as letters, she assembles little worlds of the everyday social atmosphere. We all know about needs and expectations of family and friends, well, she mixes those into a tale dealing with fortune, family, marriage, and status. These tales are a bit messy and repetitive. They don't follow much of a storyline sometimes. They hold a bit of a dramatic flair in quite funny ways (note: I am keeping all the capitalization and spelling as Jane Austen wrote, she consistently wrote her "e" before "i" rather than "i" before "e" becoming a bit of a hallmark of her teenage style, for example "freindship", "beleive", "veiw", etc) - -

When the Ladies returned, their amazement was great at finding instead of Eliza the following Note.

"Madam"
     "We are married & gone."
                        "Henry & Eliza Cecil"

Her Grace as soon as she had read the letter, which sufficiently explained the whole affair, flew into the most violent passion & after having spent an agreable half hour, in calling them by all the shocking Names her rage could suggest to her, sent out after them 300 armed Men, with orders not to return without their Bodies, dead or alive; intending that if they should be brought to her in the latter condition to have them put to Death in some torturelike manner, after a few years of Confinement.

 Ahh, yes, who wouldn't want to be part of this family? I chuckle often. Reading her "The History of England" in kings and queens is so sarcastic; it's very funny and so worth reading. These are glimpses of the more mature Jane Austen to come in her well-known novels, mixing wit within the social constructs of her time. Reading these I can even see hints that expand into her future writings. 

Do you ever feel like you need to decline that nosy new acquaintance who wants to intrude on your life, and aren't sure how to put them in their place with respect? Don't worry, Jane Austen's got your back. 

"My dear Miss Grenville said I, you appear extremely young - & may probably stand in need of some one's advice whose regard for you, joined to superior Age, perhaps superior Judgement might authorise her to give it - . I am that person, & I now challenge you to accept the offer I make you of my Confidence and Freindship, in return to which I shall only ask for yours - "

"You are extremely obliging Ma'am - said She - & I am highly flattered by your attention to me - . But I am in no difficulty, no doubt, no uncertainty of situation in which any Advice can be wanted. Whenever I am however continued she brightening into a complaisant smile, I shall know where to apply."

I bowed, but felt a good deal mortified by such a repulse...

This is from a short section simply "Collection of Letters". Remember next time you need some advice on how to deal with some nosy folks, turn to Jane Austen. She may offer some Georgian rejection and humor to get you through it. 

Attention Reading!

 

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

This passage from an essay of Bacon's could be the topic of an entire debate, I feel. Those bookish people could gather in a room and discuss their views on the different kinds of reading. With the amount of stellar books to read, with such a variety of writing styles and depths, I certainly agree, and implement myself, different ways of reading. Part of the kind of reading depends on what you seek from the book. Do you seek to learn, gain perspective, research, or be entertained? Those require different types of reading attention. I read slowly when I seek to learn, I read very fast when I am just seeking entertainment. My attention level is greatly increased when I am going to write about it later with significant depth. 

Do you dip into books? Do you read every page? Does it depend on the book?

My most abundant conversation is with books.

- Seneca, Letters on Ethics

Seneca wrote a collection of letters with advice as a mentor to a young man, frequently referencing books and encouraging more reading to learn about ethics and improve oneself. When you are reading are you having a conversation with the book? How do you have that conversation? I have a pen at the ready, marking paragraphs, underlining sentences, making notes in the margins, and sometimes arguing with the author in the margins. 

The idea is to have a dialogue, think about what you are reading. Do you agree, or not? Why? What insights or truth is being portrayed?

Wake a meaning, rather than convey a meaning.

- George MacDonald

This idea is so profound and so prominent in MacDonald's books. The first time it came to my attention it revealed remarkably how God can speak to us when we are properly woken up - it changes the way we see things. The ideas of sleeping and waking is also evident in Scripture where we are told - wake up oh sleeper, and stay alert and awake for His coming. Keep watch. Stay alert for the Lord's coming. Be mindful. All these reminders of staying awake. It makes me think of how much of us sleep through our daily lives, not alert, not engaged, and not even thinking about anything. This reminds me to read deeply to be awakened to the true, deeper meaning in good books.

Milton the Poet (not the hurricane)

 

We said goodbye to Milton the hurricane over a month ago, with gladness to be parted from its influence.  Milton the poet we also said goodbye to 350 years ago, and yet to this day welcome his influence. So, let's appreciate and visit with John Milton, the poet. 

You are likely familiar with the epic poem, Paradise Lost, published in 1667 by a bookseller Samuel Simmons in London. John Milton lived during a time of civil war in England, the Restoration of the Monarchy when Charles II came to the throne. Anti-Catholicism was the norm, and John Milton was a traditional protestant who believed in free will and freedom to choose our eternal destination. If Adam had not been free, he might have been like a puppet, Milton had said. Made in the image of God, man was, but with the freedom given to humanity.

You may have read this in school or sections of it, as it's exemplar poetry, along the lines of Homer and Dante. Epic, grand, world altering scenes told through (in Milton's case) unrhymed verse (English heroic verse without rhyme aka: iambic pentameter) that tells the heroic-type story of the fall of Adam and Eve. But the story doesn't begin with them, even though it is immediately alluded to in the opening lines:

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat

The story then flows into a scene of hell, with the first views for Satan as he arrives, along with his fallen comrades who have been thrown out of Heaven. Satan is extremely displeased to discover where they are, in a place of torment and despair. But he rallies his followers, that persuasive and prideful stature of Satan; he stands tall and commits that hope is not lost. They can reclaim heaven by waging eternal war to conquer the grand foe, and cause utmost despair unto God. Satan and his mates swear:

To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight.

Satan says he is equal to God. He believes God just has the power, which he can choose to overthrow (pride is the biggest deceiver). He refuses to let the tyranny of heaven rule him. But what should their next action be? They have a council meeting to discuss the options for how to wage war against Heaven and make their reign secure.

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.

Satan is a motivational speaker, rousing his followers as they jump up to join him in the rally. They determine that some new creation is coming, with beings that God is creating, and that can be the source of revenge. So we begin the tale of Milton's cosmos, where Heaven sits on top of the Chaos which is below. Before we even get a glimpse of God or His Creation to come, we see the behind the scenes situation of Satan and his fall. This sets up the scale of our whole story and how cosmic is truly is.

I seemed to have timed my re-visit with Milton perfectly to align with the celebration of his death 350 years ago. Milton's only surviving home, called Milton's Cottage, located outside of London, was the cottage where he lived and wrote the epic Paradise Lost. Milton's Cottage held a 24 hour Miltonathon - where volunteer readers read through the corpus of his works. How amazing is that? To watch and listen to readers from around the world, starting in England, over to America, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and back to England. I dropped in as much as I could. I listened to Milton being read out loud while I did chores, while I made some lunch and dinner, and while I waited for my tea to steep. Delightful. 

If I could suggest, I think we need more occasions to read poetry and prose out loud to each other. Not as a special occasion only, but as regular evening activity, like long ago was the normal entertainment of the evening to provoke further, deeper discussion on such questions that might be raised by such great works as this one. The beauty of the poetry, the sound of the words, the story unfolding, and the experience with one another. 

Noise - Noise

 

From The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. Letters written by an experienced demon to a younger one, instructing him in ways to tempt and draw souls to hell.

My Dear Wormwood...

    Music and silence - how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell - though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise - Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile - Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress. 

Screwtape is instructing his nephew in the ways of pulling souls into hell (seemingly) on their own accord. The art is taught in temptation, distraction, noise, and self-satisfaction. Frequently Screwtape encourages Wormwood to nudge souls into the selfish thinking, and to make them be proud of their "humility". So often the pride rises to overtake any ounce of goodness. These twisted ways of thinking can sweep us into disturbed state, and yet this is the battle that is going on for our souls every day.

Prayer is powerful. It deflects the forces of the Satan. We are not powerless. Most importantly God hears our pleas, no matter if they are formed in words or murmurs of despair. May this week be a time of prayer for our country, as we enter into the election week and the uncertainty that will unfold. 

I rebel against the noise everyday. My (ideal) evening is an image of quiet and silence in a simple, typical evening. A mug of tea, a book, legs tucked onto my chair. Stillness, quiet, thinking, praying, reading. Deep breaths. 

May we look toward the Lord of all things, who rules everything under the sun. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and yet remember who is the ruler of Caesar? Our Father in Heaven. God is above all things. 

Romans 13:1 - Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

And may there be attention given to good music, and not to all the noise that is trying to grab our attention:

HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE

Back to Brontë

 

I am very glad to let roads lead me back to the Brontës. I have been eyeing this biography on my to-read stack, and I finally picked it up, and I'm so glad I did. I've read some other biographies of Charlotte, and the Brontës. I have always felt a closeness with Charlotte. She was an avid reader, passionate about writing, creative, independent, had poor eyesight, was always creating stories to figure out life, and was also adaptable with her work. She could take jobs she disliked (governessing, teaching) but kept onwards trying to make it work, whilst her siblings failed at keeping any positions for various reasons. Their lives are filled with tragedy, as they lose their mother and two sisters very young in life. Their father, the minister at the parish church in Haworth, outlived all of them.

This biography delightfully focused a lot on her (and her siblings) literary genius and challenges. I love learning more about them all. They are endlessly fascinating to me. Living in Yorkshire, in the small village of Haworth, the siblings grew up (Charlotte, Anne, Emily, and  their brother Branwell) creating stories, poems, and news articles of their created worlds. They were all keen to know all about the political occurrences going on in their youth - newspapers brought that to them. Their teenage writings are so enjoyable, especially Charlotte's which explore themes relational, political, wealth, power, status. They take place in a parallel world that feels like the future or history, and at the same time fantasy. 

The Brontë children's profoundly visual imaginations fed avidly on them all, and by the age of thirteen Charlotte already had a very developed "list of painters whose works I wish to see," which included "Guido Reni, Julio Romano, Titian, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Annibal Caracci, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolemeo, Carlo Cignani, Vandyke, Reubens, Bartolemeo Ramerghi."

I don't even know who many of those artists are, but now my own interest and list has grown. Still, Charlotte feels like my friend from the past. She was author, poet, writer, thinker, independent woman, plain yet engaging, quiet, introverted in public, didn't like the spotlight as she became famous, hid behind her books, but engaged with other famous authors of her day. She wrote a few letters back and forth with Robert Southy, the Poet Laureate, and he replied to her, reviewing her poems and offering some kind advice. He even offered her to come visit him. She met many times with William Makepeace Thackery. She met Charles Dickens and his books had some influence on her writings. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wondered about her. It was so interesting to read about the context of their time - relating to the other authors at that time developing their books.

The three sisters took such a chance with publishing their books. They wrote through hard times, suffering, loss of family members (Anne and Emily died so young, ages 29 and 30, respectively), and they drew from personal experiences to build into their characters. They had imaginations to pull a story together as they had for all those years of sibling collaboration with the Angria and Glass Town stories. They created something new in their books, models we still use today, and are often required reading for English classes. They were so influential that we try to replicate them today. We never can, of course, we don't live in the 1830s- 1850s, and they had actual experiences to draw from.

They were wanting to make their way in the world not by some revolution but subtlety through their books, using male-sounding names to get their books published: Currier, Action, and Ellis Bell they were. It wasn't until years later when the fame of the authors (One author? Society was not sure) of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey was brought into question and Charlotte decided to show up suddenly in London with Anne, to show her publisher who they really were (it was a shock to him, needless to say). Very talented young women writers. It's always good to go back to Brontë.

Spooky Season

 

It's fun to read seasonally - as the air changes along the blustery northern winds the seasonal shifts reminds us that we live in a world of perpetual change. We might grow comfortable in the hot, humid air and long days of sunshine, but under our noses a spooky season is coming. It creeps up on you. Suddenly you notice that the sun has shifted in the sky, and that window of yours no longer basks in the summer sunshine, as shadows cross it all day. You then start to realize that the sun is setting earlier each night, and rising later in the morning. Then, overnight, the winds bring in some cooler air and you wake up with a little shiver under your thin covers. 

It's spooky season, or Autumn as I generally notate. With it brings those tales of mystery and murder, dark nights and spooky encounters. It was perfect that on my recent visit to Pressed Books & Coffee I spotted this paperback Edgar Allan Poe collection of short stories. It has a wonderfully atmospheric cover with the spooky mansion and lighted windows. I realized I did not have a collection so I brought it home with me. I have read some of these stories over the years, of course, but none stick out to me as much as my first reading of " The Cask of Amontillado". To read it again now was to revisit that first encounter.

I was in seventh grade English class, and we were assigned readings, per usual. One of them was the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado". I had no idea what I was in for, except that it was a tale of revenge, which is stated in the first line, but I was already feeling the sense of the grotesque from the next paragraph of this tale.

It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good-will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation. 

I will never forget the spooky feeling the story left me with. I had chills. The almost playful countenance of the narrator, following along as he is leading his victim to his death is truly spine-tingling. If you want some chills you can go read the short tale. It was my first encounter with a truly spooky, evil intended tale of revenge and murder. My introduction to Poe and the literary genre of horror left an indelible mark of both appreciation of such word-weaving, and intrigue of formulating such tales. I noticed there's a way to tell such a tale by revealing only just so much information at a time to leave the reader hanging on to see the next page. The reader knows what might be happening, but it's so thrilling they can't stop reading to see if that horror actually unfolds. That's a foundational tool of a good author.

This book isn't just filled with murder stories, there are also a couple of the first detective stories, these that pre-date Conan Doyle's Sherlock, and I can see many aspects of Sherlock Homes, which were such fun to encounter in these tales of solving a murder.

He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inference. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game. 

So happy spooky season! I mean, have a great, thrilling reading time! 

Visiting with the North Wind

 

Nothing went wrong at the back of the north wind. Neither was anything quite right, he thought. Only everything was going to be right some day.

- At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald

A young boy, Diamond, wakes up in the middle of the night feeling his bed shaking and blasts of the north wind. He wondered if the house would fall down. The wind was getting in through a small chink in the wall, and blew about him all night. The other side of his wall was the north wind.

I felt a lot like Diamond the other night as Hurricane Milton swept through Florida, bringing the north wind slamming against the wall of my bed as well, causing me to go without sleep and wonder about my home falling down. This story came to my mind during the long night of the hurricane's visit, so I decided to pick this book up again to re-read. It was quite perfect timing. I love when a situation is more personal and pressing and a book speaks to its reader in a recast deeper light. The illustrations are stunning as well, from Arthur Hughes in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition of the late 1800s.

The North Wind is personified as a beautiful women with long, flowing hair. She can shift herself to different appearance and sizes, showing up to Diamond differently each time. Sometimes a tiny breeze blowing the petals of a primrose. Sometimes as a giantess lifting him up to the sky for a big task. She takes him into the sky on adventures to view her work, the things she is told to do. As the North Wind, she obeys her Creator, no matter how cruel it may seem to other unknowing eyes. 

This book is the perfect avenue by which MacDonald can deal with tough questions of suffering, good/bad, and what is nature if it is not good or bad? From the angle of a child asking the North Wind question after question, each reader finds they are asking the same questions. Why would the wind, if it were good, blow a mighty squall to destroy a ship and kill many people? Why would the wind sweep the dark streets of London, causing a little girl to topple over as she tried to broom the walkways?

"But you're kinder to me, dear North Wind. Why shouldn't you be as kind to her as you are to me?
"There are reasons, Diamond. Everybody can't be done to all the same. Everybody is not ready for the same thing."

Everybody is not ready for the same thing. The wisdom in that. There are reasons, and we cannot possibly know all the reasons. We cannot see all things and what is to come. The North Wind does what she is told, it might mean something that seems to be cruel, and yet she knows she is part of a bigger story and she is playing her role. It's a difficult idea to grapple with, and George MacDonald does it so well through fantasy, using a child to be the image of innocence and the question factory that we are deep within. 

Is the wind good, bad, or exempt from such a label? How do we judge good and bad? Diamond accepts North Wind freely and quickly but then pauses when she does something to him that seems cruel. Yet later in the story you read how that event impacted something later, which would not have come to pass if not for the event caused by the wind. Here we play our part that browse ideas of God's sovereignty, being above all time and space, yet allowing suffering to take place. We cannot understand fully.

Through a fantasy story, MacDonald uses a beautiful way to showcase such questions. Instead of abstract ideas you cannot grasp, you meet a young boy and the personified wind, and have a few adventures to explore wisdom higher than us. These are the stories that sit with us for years, providing wisdom beyond the tale and come out again later in new senses of clarity. 

In a Castle by the Sea

 

Lucy knocked on the library door and receiving no answer lifted the latch and walked in. Mr. Gwinne's library resembled a clearing in a forest, but the open space was by no means uncluttered, having a minor undergrowth of books piled on the floor, like the stumps of felled trees. Around the clearing great bookcases loomed from floor to ceiling here and there, as though light shone faintly through massed leaves, and ominous with motionless power. The light in the room was dim and green because of a creeper outside the window. It softly illumined Mr. Gwinne's bald head, bent over a writing table stacked with books and papers. He would have nothing touched on his table and a pleasing silver lichen of dust grew all over it. His bald head, Lucy thought, looked like a mushroom. She picked her way cautiously towards him, careful not to knock against the tree stumps of books, for some of them were very perilously balanced. 

- The Child From the Sea, Elizabeth Goudge

This is the book I found at my library for $.50 and I have been reading since I got it, for a month or so. At 598 pages, it is a bit of a chunky one. But when you are in the hands of Elizabeth Goudge, you know you are going to get a long journey with characters you get to know, and the passing of time will lead you to inner growth and development of these characters. Through sensitive storytelling and gleams of radiant wisdom sprinkled throughout, it's not without heartbreak and trials. This story occurs in the turbulent 17th century England, and follows the life of Lucy Walter, who becomes the secret wife of Charles II. Before you get to see all the royal relationships, spies, deception, decapitations, and captures, you grow up with Lucy in Wales, with her family living in a castle by the sea. 

You follow Lucy as she is young and spunky, growing into herself. You appreciate her honesty, and her willingness to venture out in the world on her own. She has a big heart anyone would admire. 

I love this extended metaphor of a library as part of a forest of trees. She enters the library of her grandfather and wants to borrow a book. Goudge takes such a simple scene and makes it remarkably memorable, which is what she does so well in her storytelling. 

The innocence of childhood is lost when Lucy meets Charles, young and charming, they fall in love and get married in her castle chapel by a layperson (legal, not legal?, that becomes a big issue), and she then lives as part of (but not really part of) the royal family and all the drama unfolds. She is hidden, a secret wife. When war comes and it's not safe to be in England, they all flee and her husband becomes consumed with his role. Soon, as history knows, his father Charles I is be-headed and Cromwell take over parliament. Charles is the rightful king, but it's years before he is able to return to the throne. And along the way, the family breaks and is fractured by rumors, drama, misunderstanding, and disloyalty. 

You see the human side of these historical figures. Goudge brings them out so well. You feel you know them. This story doesn't end well, as Lucy only lives to age 28. She endures such suffering as does the king. At the end of the book, there are beautiful reminders of the trials we bear, from Dr. Cosin. Words that can enrich our own lives with some spiritual wisdom.

All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law, as of all benign laws, is fear. 
- The Child From the Sea, Elizabeth Goudge