My copy of A Christmas Book by Elizabeth Goudge is a 1967 First American Edition. It is a compilation of Christmas stories taken from seven of her novels and two complete short stories. One of my favorites in the book is from Goudge's novel Island Magic, a book I haven't yet read but want to because of the details of Rachell du Frocq's pretty rooms and the other domestic details.
Those things matter to me as much as plot does. The setting of Island Magic is on Guernsey of the Channel Islands, an added bonus as I loved Goudge's other novel set there, Green Dolphin Street.
At the time of the book's setting in 1888, the residents were mainly of French blood but were subjects of Queen Victoria.
Here are a few of Goudge's descriptions along with pictures from my Island Magic-inspired Christmas Day breakfast of Canadian bacon, fried potatoes, stuffed eggs, yeast rolls, and applesauce--only mine was served at Christmas Eve dinner last year.
From Island Magic:
The breakfast was wonderful.
Ham and boiled eggs and steaming coffee and jam and fresh rolls and, most marvelous of all, an island speciality, the goche détremper, a milk cake always baked early on Christmas morning to appear on the breakfast table. Colette helped Sophie to open the oven door and take it out. Its exquisite milk-white freshness was faintly tinged with golden brown on top, and its lovely crisp smell filled the whole kitchen and floated out to greet the churchgoers as they drove into the courtyard, cold and famished.
I couldn't find a recipe for goche détremper online but my French dictionary says it means left to soak.
I googled Milk Cake and chose Taste of Home's recipe [here] to try and the simple breakfast cake was delicious! [I used whole milk, not 2%.]
Actually, it is almost exactly the same recipe as for Vasilopita (Greek New Year's Cake) except it doesn't have grated lemon rind and isn't topped with confectioner's sugar, and there's no silver coin in it. I should have asked my friend Poppy about this as her Vasilopita might be very different from either recipe.
Here is a description of Goudge's Rachell's parlour. I could never duplicate it in my pictures but I can see it in my imagination and I hope you can, too.
The sun-filled parlour, shut away from the clamor of dinner and washing up, was fragrant and peaceful as the inside of a flower. Part of the tronquet de Noel, the yule log, was burning in the grate and its blue and yellow flames, whispering sweetly, lit up with the sunlight the soft little gillyflowers and forget-me-knots on the curtains, the delicate fluted china, the Chinese dragons and the rosewood table. Rachell looked round on all her treasures and was comforted.
Those "strips of Chinese embroideries" sent home by an ancestor led me to google embroidered "golden dragons dancing on the wall," and I found this at 1stDibs:
Gorgeous! After googling it, 1stDibs kept sending me ads for it on FaceBook. Ha! Thousands of dollars! And the rosewood table I found from Scully& Scully was $4,500!
Rachell is exhausted by evening--what mother is not on Christmas Day evening?
She looked around her pretty room for comfort. She looked at her French carpet, its pinks and blues faded to the colour of a dove's breast, at the miniatures over the mantelpiece and the French gilt mirror, at her tea-set patterned in blue and scarlet and gold, and at the stiff-backed chairs that her grandfather had given her grandmother...she was comforted.
She glanced around the room. The willow pattern china and the warming-pans...
My own English Allertons blue willow was a gift from my parents, a box full of pieces bought at a Methodist church thrift store, treasures that remind me that they thought of me when they saw these dishes. And I know exactly how Rachell felt because I also look around my rooms at night when work is done and take pleasure from my own pretty things. And if that's wrong, it's too bad.
Altogether, from these descriptions, I can close my eyes and see Rachell's parlour, and I can see her kitchen: "The sparkling kitchen shone like a glow-worm in the darkness of the world all around them."
Sigh!!
You can find Elizabeth Goudge's A Christmas Book at Amazon [here].
Used hardcover copies start at $249.95. I searched everywhere for less expensive copies to show you but even the few paperback 1991 editions were very expensive. Even on Abebooks the two copies start at $241.24. There were none currently on eBay. I hope my children are paying attention to the small fortune in Mom's Christmas book collection and that they don't toss them after I'm gone!
May your Christmas Day be filled with health and love, even if it can't be filled to the brim with loved ones this year. It's still the day we celebrate the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem. Rejoice!
