The Castle on the Hill by Elizabeth Goudge ~ 1941. This edition: Coronet, 1975. Paperback. ISBN: 0-340-00396-0. 256 pages.

My rating: 8/10. Rating based on the author’s body of work; I’ve read most of her books, and thought this one was one of the “upper end” in accessibility and lack of long, rambling, philosophical-religious side paths. I enjoyed it.

This is a deeply poignant story, written in the early years of World War II when the outcome was still very much in question, and the author and her fellow countrymen, along with her characters in the novel, were steeling themselves to bravely face their possibly horrific fates under a sea invasion of England. As she penned this novel, Elizabeth Goudge was living in a small country cottage near the village of Marldon, Devonshire with her frail, elderly mother; their days and nights were punctuated by the droning of fighter planes and bombers passing overhead, and the sound of explosions as German bombs exploded in the nearby coastal cities of Torquay and Paignton. Though Marldon itself escaped direct bombing, the inhabitants were extremely aware of their very real danger, and the stresses of living in wartime are very evident in this novel.

*****

Miss Dolores Brown is in a bad place, both literally and figuratively. Her home and source of income, the boarding house she has established in the family home she inherited upon the death of her parents, has been requisitioned by the government for wartime use. A relocation to London and attempts to find a job have proven fruitless; no one much needs or wants a quiet, unassertive forty-year-old woman with only her domestic skills to recommend her. Her friends and relatives are tired of hosting her; she needs to move on. Now news has come that her house and all of her stored possessions have been destroyed in a bombing raid. A train ticket to travel to stay with a relation for a day and a few coins remain between Miss Brown and utter destitution; her predominant emotion is an overwhelming fear of what will happen to her now.

As she sits outwardly proper but inwardly forlorn on a bench in front of the London Free Library, a strain of music catches her ear. Somewhere nearby someone is playing the violin, and Miss Brown rises to find the source of the music, and comes upon Jo Isaacson playing for coins in the street. Miss Brown impulsively puts one of her last shillings in the fiddler’s hat; they have a short exchange, and she goes on her way cheered and encouraged by the brief encounter.

Mr. Isaacson, born in England but musically trained in Leipzig and then settled on the Continent, was once a celebrated musician.  Now fallen on hard times both through his predilection for drinking and the growing persecution of the Jews which forced his flight from Germany, Austria and then Italy, Mr. Isaacson fears that even his old homeland England will reject him next. He has determined to earn a shilling to use in the gas fire in his room to commit suicide; due to Miss Brown’s impetuous generosity, the means to his end is now at hand.

Through a series of coincidences and under the sheltering hand of fate, Jo Isaacson does not use the shilling for his fatal final intention. He ends spending some of it for taking his landlady’s two small children to the train; they are being evacuated to the relative safety of the country. Ending up on the train himself, Mr. Isaacson has set in motion a series of events which will lead to his ultimate attainment of his longed-for place of peace.

In another part of the train, Miss Brown has just met and been taken under the wing of a prosperous historian, Mr. Birley. Mr. Birley has been to London to try to engage a housekeeper for his stately home, Birley Castle, and its household of men: himself, nephews Richard and Stephen, respectively a dashing fighter pilot and an emotionally tormented pacifist conscientious objector, and butler Boulder and gardener Pratt. Not to mention the elderly Alsatian dog Argos, and Steven’s fiery horse, Golden Eagle. But once Miss Brown has unburdened herself of her tale of woe to sympathetic Mr. Birley, he looks at her with calculating surmise. Could she, would she… ?

She certainly could and would. Bucked up by sympathy, a substantial dinner and the prospects of a job, Miss Brown brightens up considerably, and optimistically tackles the daunting task of bringing order to a heedless masculine world.

Meanwhile the two daughters of Mr. Isaacson’s landlady are also on their way to Torhaven, location of Birley Castle, to be billeted with a foster family there, as is Mr. Isaacson himself, who has been taken under the wing of Mr. Holly, the railway guard who discovered him collapsed in the baggage car after the express train left London. Mr. Holly offers him a chance to get settled and find a job “somewhere near the kiddies” – he has mistakenly thought that the children Mr. Isaacson was escorting are his own.

Add in Prunella, the lovely doctor’s daughter who has been the romantic interest of first peaceful Stephen and now exciting Richard, and elderly Mrs. Heather, endlessly smiling inhabitant of the cottage at the Castle gates, and you have all the players assembled on the stage.

Elizabeth Goudge loves to bring her characters together by impossibly convenient coincidence, and this novel is a prime example. The two little girls are billeted at the Castle, and Miss Brown eventually meets Mr. Isaacson; they are united in common memory and relief at each finding at least a temporary haven. Mr. Isaacson is modestly successful as a street musician and music teacher, and Miss Brown has settled nicely into her niche as the housekeeper of the Castle.

Mr. Birley returns to his creative solitude untroubled by household concerns; Stephen prepares for his upcoming hearing to allow him to avoid military service by working at rescue and recovery in the bombed sections of London; Richard comes and goes between missions, dallying with the passionate Prue whenever chance allows; Miss Brown wins over the initially hostile Boulder by her gentle good nature and hard work; Pratt gets on with things much as usual; Mrs. Heather keeps smiling.

Tragedy and turmoil turn this newly peaceful world upside down, and the responses of all concerned show the best qualities that lie buried in everyone to be brought forth under adversity, another favourite Elizabeth Goudge theme.

This condensation leaves out everything that makes this book so appealing: the glimpses into the inner thoughts and deeper motivations of every character involved. Stephen is handled particularly well as he wrestles with his decision to be a non-combatant; his brother and uncle are fiercely and actively patriotic, and though they treat him with respect and affection it is clear that they are impatient rather than understanding of his dilemma.

The character of the quiet and dedicated Miss Brown serves to highlight the divisions and expectations of the class system, soon to be changed forever by the new equality of the war and post-war years. She feels something more than subservient and feudal affection for the Birley family; they however regard her as an appreciated and respected but somehow not-quite-equal being. Miss Brown hides her feelings well; her pride lets her go forward with head held high even when the oblivious Birleys unintentionally disregard her occasional attempts at a deeper friendship.

Mr. Isaacson resolves his feelings of anger towards the world and its unfairness and is able to move onward in his life. (And I would like to mention that I thought he was one of the most awkward characters, as his creator did not seem sure of how she should portray him – he is inconsistent throughout, one moment gruff and earthy, and the next full of academically poetic musings.)

Elizabeth Goudge likes to sort out her couples and pair them off in their proper order. Children are inevitably provided with the best possible homes; damaged marriages are salvaged; family rifts are healed; happy spinsters and bachelors regain their peaceful solitude and worthwhile occupations. The Castle on the Hill runs true to form, but it has much to recommend it in its thoughtful passages and articulate characters. The setting is lovingly described, and most of the characters are fully realized and allowed their chance to show their full and complex humanity.

Given that the book was written in wartime, in the very time that it portrays, it acts as an interesting and quite readable realistic-idealistic period piece. The horrors and tragedies of the war are true to life; the human response of the heroes and heroines is certainly the ideal.

The last few pages have numerous references to the comforts of religion and the role of God in human lives, but this is not at all a “preachy” book.  I thought it was one of the less rambling and more focussed adult novels by this often-underrated writer. I could definitely see shades of some of the characters of Goudge’s most well-known and beloved books, the Damerosehay novels (The Bird in the Tree – 1940, The Herb of Grace – 1948, and The Heart of the Family – 1953) which were written during and after the war years; The Castle on the Hill is something of a dress rehearsal, though it stands alone as a story complete unto itself, with characters whom we never again meet, though their soul sisters and brothers reappear in different guise in her many other books.

Note: I am here including, with some reluctance, the cover shot from the 1975 paperback re-release. The cover at the beginning is from an earlier edition. I am not sure who these illustrated people are supposed to portray; in my opinion they do not represent actual characters of the story, but instead have strayed onto the cover from an Eaton’s mail-order catalogue, Misses and Gents section, circa the polyester era! Quite one of the ugliest covers possible for this book, and not at all indicative of the content. A dire reminder not to judge a book by its outward appearance!