The Little White Horse

I thought I had set Elizabeth Goudge aside for awhile, but when I found myself with unusually long periods of uninterrupted reading time over the weekend, I picked up The Little White Horse to alternate with the other book I’m reading. I enjoyed it thoroughly and wonder how on earth I missed it as a young reader.

Recently I read Goudge’s biography, and I learned among other things about an experience in an art class in which her teacher paused before a painting of hers and remarked on its technical failure, but its inspired success at evoking the atmosphere of a fairy tale. A friend of mine commented that she likes Goudge for a similar reason: she is able to evoke the “elsewhere” we search for in our reading, and to quench our thirst for imaginative immersion in a world of beauty and meaning. The Little White Horse is no exception in its evocation of an utterly appealing world where good and evil battle it out in an ancient landscape full of mystery.

This is the title that, showing up on list after list of classic children’s books, brought Elizabeth Goudge to my attention. No review would be complete without mentioning that it was J.K. Rowling’s favorite book as a child. It ended up not being the first book I tackled, so on this reading I was able to recognize some of the ingredients that seem to resurface in Goudge’s books:

• an ancient and beautiful house
• a door in the wall with a bell chain next to it
• deja-vu and intuition
• a glimpse of a man bent nearly double under a burden
• the presentness of the past
• good food (the descriptions rival those of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy)
• wise animals
• darkness and light
• landscapes used to depict different states of mind or attitudes of heart
• inbreakings of holiness

My original intention was to read this aloud to my daughters, but in the end I decided to preview it. My older daughter would probably enjoy it as a read-aloud, but I’m not sure my youngest is ready. Maybe so; both girls liked Misselthwaite Manor of The Secret Garden, Irene of The Princess and the Goblin, and the sensible animals of Narnia, all of which came to mind as I read this. But there is also the question of whether to read it to the girls, or wait and let them read it for themselves. My hunch is that the latter would be best. I already have some regret over reading the Narnia books to them rather than leaving them to be discovered. This one is too good to risk taking away their chance to experience it for themselves.