The Dean's Watch in Retro Reads

May 25, 2014 Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: inspirational-and-religious-fiction, historical-fiction

Before a few Goodreads friends strongly recommended this 1960 novel by Elizabeth Goudge, I had never heard of this author or any of her books. But these friends were so enthusiastic about The Dean’s Watch that I had to read it – which meant buying an actual copy of the paperback online, since it’s not in ebook form, or in the library, or even in my local bookstores. But I’m glad to say the search was worth it.

This is a lovely, inspiring novel set in an English town in the 1870s. The main charact Before a few Goodreads friends strongly recommended this 1960 novel by Elizabeth Goudge, I had never heard of this author or any of her books. But these friends were so enthusiastic about The Dean’s Watch that I had to read it – which meant buying an actual copy of the paperback online, since it’s not in ebook form, or in the library, or even in my local bookstores. But I’m glad to say the search was worth it.

This is a lovely, inspiring novel set in an English town in the 1870s. The main characters are a diverse set: Isaac Peabody is an older clockmaker, a lifelong bachelor who lives with his embittered sister Emma. He lives for his work with clocks and watches, both creating them and repairing and maintaining them for others.

description

Every clock of importance in the aristocratic quarter of the city was in his care, intimately known to him and loved and cherished during half a lifetime… Isaac’s humility did not discriminate between man and man and scarcely between man and watch. In his thought men were much like their watches. The passage of time was marked as clearly upon a man’s face as upon that of his watch and the marvelous mechanism of his body could be as cruelly disturbed by evil hazards. The outer case varied, gunmetal or gold, carter’s corduroy or bishop’s broadcloth, but the tick of the pulse was the same, the beating of life that gave such a heartbreaking illusion of eternity.

The most intricate and beautiful watch in the city belongs to Adam Ayscough, the Dean of the city cathedral.

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The Dean is a brilliant but homely and cripplingly shy man who nevertheless has an absolute gift for cleansing organizations of corruption – be they schools or religious organizations or cities. Although Isaac the clockmaker and the Dean belong to completely different social circles, they become friends through their shared interests in horology (clockmaking), and they begin to affect each other’s lives in unexpected ways.

Surrounding these two central characters, moving in and through their lives, are several other unique characters: Polly, who is Emma and Isaac’s maid, who is poor in worldly possessions but rich in love and joyfulness; Job, a long-suffering young man apprenticed to a cruel fishmonger, whose artistic soul yearns to make beautiful things and to love Polly; Garland, the Ayscoughs’ dedicated butler; and others.

Equally important are the non-human characters in the story: the town cathedral that inspires the Dean and many others, but whose size and darkness scare Isaac to death. The city itself, with its aristocratic quarters, its streets of genteel poverty, and its appalling slums. The watches and clocks that bring order and loveliness to their lives.

description

This is an unabashedly spiritual story, exploring how God affects our lives and how people can touch each other’s lives for good, but I didn’t find it sappy or overdone. It’s inspiring but at the same time gently humorous and charming. As the Dean watches over the city in his twilight years, he learns more than he ever thought he would about loving and helping people, and how much the people around him also love him.

Highly recommended!! ...more

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May 13, 2014 Hana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014-reads, old-fashioned, historical-fiction, cheering-potions

At first The Dean's Watch seems no more consequential than a lovely tour through a picturesque English village, with a little talk about the town's history and the craft of watchmaking offered after tea.

Then the first accident happens: Isaac Peabody, an elderly, desperately shy watchmaker has two repaired watches to return to their owners, but somehow, a watch paper inscribed with a bit of doggerel verse has gone missing from one customer's watch and ends up inserted in the watchcase of the bril At first The Dean's Watch seems no more consequential than a lovely tour through a picturesque English village, with a little talk about the town's history and the craft of watchmaking offered after tea.

Then the first accident happens: Isaac Peabody, an elderly, desperately shy watchmaker has two repaired watches to return to their owners, but somehow, a watch paper inscribed with a bit of doggerel verse has gone missing from one customer's watch and ends up inserted in the watchcase of the brilliant and terrifying Dean of Ely's great cathedral.

Isaac always tries to avoid meeting the Dean when he goes to wind the Deanery clocks, yet this time he is caught on the wrong side of the green baize door and finds himself facing the tall black figure holding the returned watch in one hand.'Personal terror was lost in professional anxiety. Had he failed in his mending of the watch?...He came nearer and his heart nearly stopped...By mistake he had put one of the watch papers he kept for his humbler clients inside the Dean's watch. And what was on it? Several of his watch papers were comic ones, some even vulgar. "It was an accident. Please forgive me, sir."'

This is what the watch paper said:

I labour here with all my might,
To tell the time by day or night;
In thy devotion copy me,
And serve thy God as I serve thee.

To tell what happens next would be to deprive you of the pleasure of watching this delicate story unfold, softly, petal by petal. Because the accident was a hidden miracle, and what happens next is a series of small changes, of chance encounters, and moments of compassion that alter dozens of lives.

Each one of the many characters who people this little village in the Fens of Cambridgeshire is drawn with perfection, and the descriptions of the land, the town and the churches are breathtakingly exquisite.

This is a joyful and very old-fashioned book. Authors don't write books like this anymore; no one thinks like this anymore. But beyond the literary mastery, for those who enjoy gently told tales, this is a story that lifts the heart.

Content rating G. ...more

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Jan 15, 2021 Julie Durnell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: england-uk

An amazing, beautiful, and humbling story of love.
Love, and nothing else, was eternal. Love is the Lord by whom we escape death.

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Oct 20, 2018 Barb in Maryland rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: keepers, best-of-2018, historical-fiction

What a marvelous book. Very old-fashioned, very spiritual but never preachy or saccharine.
Goudge has such a way with characters--every one of the people she involves in her story is so real, so nuanced. No cardboard cut-outs here! I enjoyed meeting all of them, especially the Dean, Adam Ayscough and Isaac Peabody, clock maker extraordinaire. And Miss Montague, a very wise and wonderful old woman who knows that love is the answer. And the two young people, Polly (who is naturally happy) and Job ( ...more

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Oct 24, 2018 Susan in NC rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

What a beautiful, sentimental (without being at all mawkish or maudlin) novel! This was my first Elizabeth Goudge novel, and it will not be my last.

So many wonderful characters - the Dean, his cold but beautiful wife, his many friends in the cathedral city: clockmaker Isaac, his brilliant apprentice Job, the elderly invalid Miss Montague, and the terrifying toddler (wasn’t sure of her exact age), Bella. I read this book with the Retro Reads group, and in the discussion one of our members pointed ...more

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Oct 20, 2013 Cindy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: spirituality-religion-philosophy, historical-fiction, gentle-atmosphere, ache-to-live-here, christian-fiction

I wish I could give this book 10 stars. it has filled me with sadness and satisfaction, joy and hope. I wish I could have known the Dean, Adam Ayscough, in my own life. It will have to be enough to know he existed in the mind of Elizabeth Goudge and I am grateful.

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