Miss Montague

While spending the past two days in pure delight, including more tears than I ever shed before over this story, lost in the pages of Elizabeth Goudge's novel The Dean's Watch, the most recent of many readings of the book, I have become suddenly enamored with the frail and elderly Miss Montague.   Why now?  I met her years ago and have always appreciated her place within this story.   But somehow, this time, the beauty of her character shone out so brightly that the deep in her called to the deep in me; without it being named by the author (this is Elizabeth Goudge's special gift) I know it is nothing less than the dazzling love and light of Christ.

Miss Montague, though frail and elderly when we meet her, is not the least frail or failing in her qualities of faith and love.  We are told her story from her girlhood and we learn how her inner strength and beauty were hard won over many decades of battle with life and self.  

Curious to find out if others out there in the big wide world might share my profound admiration and love for this late-nineteenth-century lady, Miss Montague, I went exploring.   There is no lack of material to be found, and you, too, can find as much or more.   To whet your appetite,  I share a few selections below with links that you can visit if you are feeling particularly adventurous.

Billy Graham, I was surprised to discover, evidently reads Elizabeth Goudge, for he mentions Miss Montague in his book The Secret of Happiness.

I also found Miss Montague described quite lovingly in a 2004 newsletter from St. Ignatious Orthodox Church here.   Indeed, Miss Montague's approach seems to fall quite in line with what little I understand of the Eastern Orthodox way of things.  And since that has now become the Way upon which I very willingly go, I am doubly encouraged in it.

Some of you already know the blogger Lanier and will not be at all surprised to read what she has to say about The Dean's Watch.

So what, you may be asking, is it about Miss Montague that draws me so?  She achieved the rare beauty of a life fully surrendered to God.  How many of us even know what that really means?  In my own life the struggle continues, and it has taken me 60 years to even begin to appreciate the depths of meaning behind those words "fully surrendered to God" and the small glimpses I've been graced with have only made me desire this all the more.

Elizabeth Goudge must have walked a similar path, for listen to how knowingly she writes about Miss Montague . . .

  So she took a vow to love. Millions before her had taken the same simple vow but she was different from the majority because she kept her vow, kept it even after she had discovered the cost of simplicity. Until now she had only read her Bible as a pious exercise, but now she read it as an engineer reads a blueprint and a traveler a map, unemotionally because she was not emotional, but with a profound concentration because her life depended on it. Bit by bit over a period of years that seemed to her long, she began to get all her scaffolding into place. She saw that all her powers, even those which had seemed to mitigate against love, such as her shrewdness which had always been quick to see the faults of others, her ambition and self-will, could by a change of direction be bound over in service to the one overmastering purpose. She saw that she must turn from herself, and began to see something of the discipline that that entailed, and found too as she struggled that no one and nothing by themselves seemed to have the power to entirely hold her when she turned to them. 

It was then that the central figure of the Gospels, a historical figure whom she deeply revered and sought to imitate, began at rare intervals to flash out at her like live lightning from their pages, frightening her, turning the grave blueprint into a dazzle of reflected fire. Gradually she learned to see that her fear was not of the lightning itself but what it showed her of the nature of love, for it dazzled behind the stark horror of Calvary. At this point, where so many vowed lovers faint and fail, Mary Montague went doggedly on over another period of years that seemed if possible longer and harder than the former period. At some point along the way, she did not know where because the change came so slowly and gradually, she realized that He had got her and got everything. His love held and illumined every human being for whom she was concerned, and whom she served with the profound compassion which was their need and right, behind the Cathedral, the city, every flower and leaf and creature, giving it reality and beauty. She could not take her eyes from the incredible glory of His love. As far as it was possible for a human being in this world she had turned from herself.  She could say, "I have been turned," and did not know how very few can speak these words with truth.

Here is truth.  Here is love,  Here is deep and abiding joy that is centered only in God, the source and fountainhead of everything.  Here is glorious servanthood of the creature to the Creator.

To which, my prayer has been and remains

I have gone astray like a lost sheep; 

seek Your servant, 

for I have not forgotten Your commandments.  

Psalm 119:176

A few dusty jackets....

This post was originally published in September of 2007, just a couple of months after I started blogging.  What an adventure this blogging experiment has turned out to be. 

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Today I thought it might be fun to show you a few rather old but quite interesting dust jackets from a handful of my favorite books. All of the books are, of course, by Elizabeth Goudge!

This first one is her autobiography, The Joy of the Snow, copyright 1974, Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., London. I start with this cover because of what is depicted: the seventeenth-century cottage, called Rose Cottage, where Elizabeth Goudge lived for nearly 40 years until she died in 1984. Rose Cottage is located in Dog Lane, just off Peppard Common, near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. How quaint is that address! It's like my dream of the perfect place to live...a quaint old cottage in a narrow lane somewhere in the beautiful English countryside.


On pages 246-7, Ms. Goudge describes the area when she first moved there:

In those days Peppard Common could still be said to be in the country. A few houses were grouped around it and to the north the road that crossed the common disappeared towards Henley between tall elm trees, the village pond to the left and the seventeenth-century inn, The Dog, to the right. The entrance to Dog Lane could hardly be seen where it left the road beside the inn, and the two cottages in the lane hiding behind the inn could hardly be seen either. Dog Lane is very ancient, it was a Pack and Prime lane, and is still called that when it reaches Henley. The men with their pack-horses primed their pistols when they rode up from the river to the wild common lands above. The two cottages are called Primrose Cottage and Rose Cottage and have been called those names for perhaps three hundred years...

Living there, Ms. Goudge was inspired to write an historical novel called The White Witch, copyright 1958, Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., London, a fascinating story about that area of Oxfordshire. She includes in the story a woman, the "white witch," who lives in Rose Cottage. The home was featured on the book's dust jacket, and you can see the resemblance to the cottage on The Joy of the Snow's jacket.

Interestingly (to me anyway), about a year ago, when I had nothing better to do, I "Googled" Dog Lane, Peppard Common and found that Rose Cottage was being offered for sale for 695,000 British Pounds, which I believe is just over $1 million in US currency. And the other cottage in Dog Lane, Primrose Cottage, had recently sold for 725,000 British Pounds. Guess I won't be moving there—not at those prices!


And now for the dust jacket from her book The Rosemary Tree, copyright 1956, Coward-McCann, Inc., New York. This is extra special to me because the wonderful illustrations are found on both the front and the back of the jacket. I just love the style and color of these old-fashioned drawings! And in my opinion, the story is just as delightful the art depicting it.




Next we have this charming dust jacket for Gentian Hill, copyright MCMXLIX, Coward-McCann, Inc., New York. Do you know what year those Roman numerals indicate? I don't; my dear hubby translated them for me - it is 1949. I am enamored of those sailing ships in the bay and the view from the little chapel on the cliff above the sea.

Old sailing ships have always fascinated me, probably from reading about them in Elizabeth Goudge's books, Gentian Hill and Green Dolphin Street (or Green Dolphin Country, as it was first published in England). Perhaps you would be interested to know that Hollywood made a movie in the 1940's of her Green Dolphin novel (sadly, my copy is sans dust jacket).




My penultimate offering for your viewing pleasure is the dust jacket for A City of Bells, first published in 1936; my edition was published in 1949, Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd., London. That bow window in the little building with the bookseller sign above it is significant to the story, as are the people approaching the shop's front door.




And finally, The Dean's Watch, copyright 1960, Coward-McCann, Inc., New York. See the cathedral towering over the square, and the clock shop across the way? And the characters standing there? They are all part of this fabulous story set in a cathedral town based on the English town of Ely, where Elizabeth Goudge lived in her youth with her parents. Her father, Principal of the Theological College at Wells Cathedral, was offered a canonry at Ely Cathedral and the family moved there for the sake of her mother's health. Ms. Goudge says on page 100 of her autobiography "...for me, Ely was the home of all homes."

All of these lovely dust jackets contain hints about what's inside the pages of these novels, as any good jacket must. I've read these stories so many times since the 1960's that it's almost as though I have personally met the characters, and this is yet another reason why I so enjoy looking at them as the artists conceived of them in each of these wonderful illustrations.

I hope you enjoyed my little tour!