“Free to go where you like and do what you like.” Such a thing had never been said to them before. If a slight chill had touched their hearts as the thought of being classically educated it had been dispersed by that superb sentence. Wonderful adventure shone ahead.
-Elizabeth Goudge, “Linnets and Valeriens”
The British Isles, notable for spectacular mothers and motherless children in its literature, offers yet another gem for a family read aloud. Elizabeth Goudge, perhaps best known for her award-winning book “The Little White Horse,” wrote in the mid-20th century and leaves an inspired legacy of stories about real children. One fine example is her 1964 novel “The Linnets and Valerians” about four motherless children cast to the care of their father’s family while he is abroad as a soldier.
Where the book succeeds most is in presenting real children who behave as real children do. Sure, Nan, the eldest sister, is a goody-two-shoes, but the rest of the gang are precisely as vexing, messy, unreliable, and destructive as real children.
The story begins with the four siblings, 12-year-old Nan and her younger brothers, Robert and Timothy, and younger sister Betsy, escaping imprisonment in their grandmother’s house and attempting to run away. With a growing sense of magical realism playing at the edges of the story, a stolen horse and cart happen to take them to precisely the place they should go.
It’s an eccentric tale of small-town life in the British countryside. Homeschooling makes an appearance with some further excellent commentary on scheduling the day with children and household help (alas, not an attainable ideal but still offers inspiration for the real world). The children’s Uncle Ambrose is a phenomenal character, well worth getting to know.
Having spent decades running a boy’s boarding school, he has sworn off the company of children, only to find himself responsible for his nieces and nephews, clearly relishing the opportunity to initiate them into the grandeur of Greek and Roman studies despite his reluctance. Not only does he proclaim that the children are “free to go where they like and do what they like” in the hours outside of lessons, but he also has a realistic sense of what children are capable of, both in pressing them to achieve higher standards and anticipating when they are likely to fall short.
On Sunday, when the children are expected to remain engaged in quiet recreation for the whole of the afternoon, he has the foresight to purchase painting supplies, books, and quiet games to keep them occupied. The children observe that, apart from their father, Uncle Ambrose is the only adult who understand that in order to be good, the children need something to be good with. Like Aunt Emily of another story supplying the means of civilized free time, Uncle Ambrose is an example of how a well-stocked home makes for happy free time.
Uncle Ambrose is, of course, simply too good to be true. He is a character in a story, after all. But he is a wonderful example for parents to observe and imitate. Is it a fault in the story that the good characters are so good? It seems Goudge was conscious of her decision to make a better, more beautiful world. She wrote of her work, “As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous, and materialistic, it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that makes an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself.”
The magical realism growing throughout the story becomes a full-blown fairy story with some magic that is, frankly, quite creepy. For that reason, “The Linnets and Valerians” is not a favorite among Goudge aficionados. It is not bad or overly dark, though parts of the book are quite spooky. One little girl listening to the story remarked that she had at first thought it was just an ordinary story and was delighted to discover it was a fairy tale. That is, perhaps, the best way to describe it.
Where the story triumphs is with the children, whose innocence inspires change and reconciliation where none was thought possible, partaking of some hard-to-define magic that brings about unearthly restoration. One wonders if not being British removes us from fully appreciating the subtleties of the fairy magic. The god Pan makes an appearance, as baffling as the goat-and-music-man’s prominent placement in other British tales. Maybe our ignorance of the classics impairs our ability to appreciate it or our unfamiliarity with the myths of that part of the world make us squeamish.
Nevertheless, this is a wonderful story to share. And what is the preferred title for many fans of Goudge’s writing for children? Universally, readers proclaim the superiority of Goudge’s award-winning children’s book from 1946, “The Little White Horse.” It is a happy accident that reading the supposedly inferior “Linnets and Valerians” first, you have an excuse to read another marvelous story immediately after to compare.
More on that later. For now, we are off to Moonacre!
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