Elizabeth Goudge

On the 24th of April 1900, at the start of a new century, Elizabeth Goudge was born, in the quiet “Edwardian erstwhile” of the small town of Wells, Somerset, in Tower House close by the cathedral in an area known as The Liberty. Her father was the Reverend Henry Goudge, who taught in the cathedral school, and her mother was the former Miss Ida Collenette, who had met him while on holiday from her home in The Channel Isles.

In the early 20th century, Wells was a place set apart, surrounded by the low green hills of the county and only joined to the outside world by the slender steel link of the railway. The inhabitants still rode horses and drove carriages; even the railway taxi is described as a pumpkin on wheels. (Goudge 1949 p12) One age gently touching another.

An only child of a loving family union, a match made for love still quite unusual at that time, Henry Goudge’s career led them to live in beautiful, otherworldly places. They were also sheltered from the practicalities of life by being wealthy enough to employ three maids, a Nanny, and a Gardener.

Her Mother was semi-invalid as the result of a bicycle accident that occurred while she was carrying Elizabeth. In later years, it was discovered that she had a displaced coccyx, something which would have been managed and mended today. She also suffered from sinusitis so badly that an abscess formed and pressed up against her brain. She went to London for a groundbreaking operation that was watched by medical students from all over the world. The operation was a success, and the worse of her pain was relieved.

An only child brought up in these circumstances was not educated or equipped for the modern world. Still, it was ideal for an imaginative embryonic writer, storing away instances and images which would resurface later in her books, such as City of Bells, Henrietta’s House, Linnets and Valerians, Sister of the Angels, and The Lost Angel. She was taught at home by a governess called Miss Lavington, who metamorphosed into the gentle Miss Lavender in the book The City of Bells.

The other world she grew to love as a child was the Channel Island home of her maternal grandparents. Her first novel, Island Magic, was a collection of her mother’s memories of the Island and the folklore and myth imbued in them. The du Frock family that Elizabeth wrote about in this book and Make Believe were her mother's family thinly disguised. 

She was taken on annual visits by one of her Aunts who came over to England in order to take her back to Guernsey, a sea voyage of nearly two days. She stayed with her maternal Grand Parents, who lived for a time in the town of St Peter’s Port, in a street which Elizabeth later called Green Dolphin Street; the Ozanne's home was her grandparents. They later moved out into the country to the farmstead known as “Le Hechet,” close to another walled farm used as the setting for Bon Repos.