The Scent of Water, by Elizabeth Goudge (ebook version: Hendrickson Publishing Marketing, 2011; original print edition copyright 1963)

Why would practical, sensible Mary Lindsay leave a satisfying job in London and move to a country village to live in a house she inherited from a relative she’d met only once as a child? She doesn’t know, but it feels like the right decision.

The inheritance brings back memories: of that one meeting with her father’s cousin, also named Mary Lindsay. Of the instant connection with the house and then with the unusual Cousin Mary. Of the lady’s treasured collection of “little things” – miniatures that delighted them both.

The move triggers other memories: of her fiancé John who died before their wedding. In some unknown way, she hopes to understand him better now – and also to get to know Cousin Mary through the journals she finds in the house.

The characters, both living in the village and as found in the journals, are portrayed with an honest compassion, not glossing over their flaws or hiding their emotional struggles. Cousin Mary endured bouts of mental illness. A prayer, shared with her by a fellow sufferer, is the one thing that stuck with me through the probably 40 years since I first read the story:

“My dear,” he said, “love, your God, is a trinity. There are three necessary prayers and they have three words each. They are these, ‘Lord have mercy. Thee I adore. Into Thy hands.’ ” [chapter 5]

That covers most things, doesn’t it?

Two other favourite lines, one evocative and one amusing:

“…what I seek is the goodness of God that waters the dry places.” [chapter 5, Cousin Mary in her journal]

“He has a two-track mind, which is more than most of us have, but the tracks are narrow.” [chapter 10]

One caution: this book was originally published in the early 1960s and refers (positively) to North American First Nations and Romany peoples using terms that are now considered offensive.  

Causing offence would never be the author’s intent. This is a novel that embraces readers, drawing us in like the welcoming door that invited the child Mary into the house. It offers charming descriptions of settings both in nature and in the houses, gentle conversation, and people allowed to make the wrong choices in the hope they’ll find some good in themselves.

Elizabeth Goudge was a beloved British writer. I appreciated her books many years ago and am delighted to find some of them now in digital form when I’d assumed they’d be out of print and gone. The Scent of Water was the one I remembered most fondly by title, due to the prayer which strengthened me through some difficult days.

For more about the author, visit the Elizabeth Goudge Society website.

[Review copy from the public library via the Hoopla Digital app.]