GOODY HALL

Some quotes from Goody Hall by Natalie Babbit.

Chapter 2

“One morning…a baggy young man came down the road from the village, and in spite of his heavy satchel he half bounced, half glided like a large balloon, gulping great lungfuls of May as a thirsty man gulps water, and letting them out again in blasts of shapeless song. He had been singing all the way from the village…

Just as he reached for the fortieth time a particular place in the music which sounded like, ‘Merrily, merrily shall I live now,’ but wasn’t quite that, somehow, he came to a sudden bend in the road and the song ceased abruptly. ‘Aha!’ said the baggy young man. ‘This is the place. It must be.’

…and now he was leaning on the gate and looking at the beautiful house with a sort of hypnotized pleasure. As he stared, his mind’s eye squinted and he seemed to see himself coming out of the tall door, a new and polished self in an elegant black suit. He watched this self pause on the verandah, pluck a blossom from a flowering shrub that leaned there, and hold it delicately under his nose. Then the scene enlarged. A crowd of ragged people appeared at the gate, clutching their thin coats under their chins. ‘There he is!’ cried the ragged people. ‘There he is! Bless you, sir! Bless you!’ He saw himself striding down the long gravel path to the gate and now he was pressing a gold coin into each outstretched, careworn hand. ‘Bless you!’ cried the people.

…The baggy young man rubbed his forehead and frowned. ‘Oh no, you don’t!’ he said severely to the house. ‘I don’t even want to be that sort of a fellow. I’m here to be a tutor, remember, not a lord.’ And he picked up the old satchel firmly, opened the gate, and started up the path.

************

…The baggy young man sat up and blinked, and the boy who had knocked him over sat up and blinked, too. They got to their feet, brushing gravel from the seats of their pants, and looked at each other warily.
‘Who are you?’ said the boy at last.
‘I’ve come about the tutoring,’ said the baggy young man. ‘My name is Hercules Feltwright.’
‘Hercules?’ said the boy. ‘Really? What kind of a name is that?’
‘An unkind kind of name,’ said Hercules, ‘but I’ve learned to accept it.’”

(pages 9-14)


Chapter 3

“It’s important to understand that Hercules Feltwright did not believe he was a hero like the mythological Hercules for whom he was named. Heroes are larger than life—or so we like to picture them—while Hercules Feltwright was tall and thin and rather stringy, and his courage was not at all the lion kind. However, Hercules Feltwright, son of a hatter and descendant of a long line of hatters, had been reminded time and time again of certain similarities between things that happened to him and things that had happened to the first Hercules in all the old stories. Only coincidences, to be sure, but Hercules Feltwright resented them just the same because he didn’t want to be like the first Hercules…

Hercules Feltwright wished instead to be his own true self, which is the best wish of all. But…there were the things that kept happening to him…

For instance, when he was a baby a neighbor’s child put an earthworm into his cradle and he rolled over on it in his sleep and mashed it flat. His mother was overjoyed. Hadn’t the first Hercules killed a crawling thing in his cradle when he was only a baby? Yes, but in the case of the first Hercules the crawling thing was a large poisonous snake and the infant strangled it with his bare hands! Never mind that. There may have been small differences here and there, but it was still the same thing in general, she reasoned; and it was a sign—a hero for a son!—a very promising sign.

There were other coincidences. There was the time when a neighborhood cat named Neemie went mad. Hercules, then a boy of eight, caught it and killed it after it had terrorized the village for a week. There! Didn’t that prove it again? Here was the first Hercules once more, gone out to capture the ferocious Nemean Lion for the first of his Twelve Labors. Wasn’t a lion nothing but a cat when you came right down to it?

************

…But it was not to be: Hercules Feltwright had gone away and was loose in the world, traveling about with a troupe of touring players, for he had decided that the practical way to accomplish his ends was to become an actor. ‘That way,’ he reasoned, ‘I can try on as many different selves as possible and choose the one that seems to be the best and most comfortable fit.’ And this is exactly how it worked out.”

(pages 22-27)

Chapter 4

“…He sighed contentedly and stretched out on his back in the grass with his eyes closed. A circle of sunlight wobbled on his cheek and a passing bee paused hopefully for an instant above his nose—was this some strange new variety of flower?—and then, seeing its mistake, buzzed away with disgust.

Willet Goody chewed on a blade of grass and watched his new tutor with interest. ‘That bee was going to sting you,’ he remarked.

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Hercules comfortably. He began to hum under his breath, waving one hand lazily, and then the hum opened up into the song he had been singing earlier on the road:

‘Where the sea bucks, there buck I.
In a proud ship’s bell I lie.
Dum da de dum, de dum dum,
Dum da dum, I forget this part,
Mariner, mariner shall I live now,
Under the mosses that hang on the prow.’

(pages 32-33)

Chapter 5

“…And then he noticed that outside an enormous lilac bush was in full bloom, and when he opened his window a lush branch that had been pressing against the glass came bobbing in with its shiny heart-shaped leaves, and the heavy purple clusters filled the room with their sweet scent. ‘Lilacs!’ he exclaimed. ‘My very favorite flower! I’d rather have lilacs than all the perfumes of Arabia.’

‘Where’s the cat skin?’ asked Willet.

‘The darling buds of May!’ breathed Hercules, still at the window.

‘Hercules!’ said Willet impatiently.

************

Willet took the limp skin reverently and rubbed its meager fur against his cheek. ‘It’s beautiful!’ he sighed. ‘I wish I had one.

‘Well, I’ll tell you what,’ said Hercules. ‘I’ll give it to you. I should have gotten rid of it long ago. It was a silly idea to begin with.’

************

‘It’s the best thing I ever had in all my life,’ said Willet with conviction. He carried the skin happily to his own room and in a moment he was back. ‘What else have you got that’s interesting?’

‘Well, let’s see,’ said Hercules. How about nose putty? Ever see any up close? They use it all the time now in plays.’

‘I’ve never been to a play,’ said Willet, sitting down on the bed and looking at Hercules expectantly.

‘What? Never been to a play? I can hardly believe it.’ He crossed to the bureau and began pulling drawers open. ‘Where’s my box? My make-up box? I’m not used to someone else putting away all my…oh, here it is.’ He took it out of the bottom drawer, opened it, and fished out a lump of pinkish, clay-like stuff which he squeezed with his fingers for a few moments until it was soft. Then he clapped it over his nose.

‘Willet burst out laughing. ‘You look so funny—like a whole other person!’
Hercules went to the long mirror that stood in the corner and peered at himself. ‘Not bad,’ he said. He fussed with the putty, molding it into a somewhat more reasonable shape.

‘Yes, you can change yourself altogether with a bit of this stuff.’ He turned his head from side to side, admiring the large new nose, and then he paused. ‘All I need now is…’
Shrugging out of his baggy jacket, he went to the wardrobe and began to pull things out and put them on. A dark vest. A black cloak. A flat black hat with an obscuring brim. And a long red scarf which he wound around his neck and up over his mouth until only the nose poked out. Then he returned to the mirror. ‘There!’ His voice came muffled through the folds of the scarf. ‘Now—who am I?’ He turned around and faced Willet, slinking a few steps forward and narrowing his eyes under the shadowy hat brim.

‘Mott Snave!’ cried Willet, utterly delighted.

‘Right! I’m Mott Snave, the jewel thief!’ the muffled voice growled. ‘Hand over the diamond necklace!’

‘Oh, Hercules!’ crowed Willet. ‘It’s just wonderful. That’s exactly how Alfreida described him.’”

(pages 48-51)


Chapter 8

“Hercules Feltwright took a sip of tea. ‘Here I am,’ he thought, ‘sitting here calmly drinking tea with a round little woman in the middle of a rainstorm and in a minute we’re going to talk to the dead.’ The notion made his stomach feel hollow. ‘Well!’ he said out loud with false heartiness. ‘There’s an idea!’

Alfreida put down her cup, stood up, and began walking around the room blowing out candles. Hercules took a large swallow of tea and nearly choked. ‘What are you doing that for?’ he quavered.

‘Can’t have a séance in broad daylight,’ said Alfreida cheerfully. She left took candles burning on a small table which she placed in front of him, but the rest of the room was lost in shadows. ‘Sit there and enjoy your tea,’ she said, ‘while I get ready. I’ll only be a minute.’ And then she left the room.

Hercules sat there on the sofa in the dimness and listened to the rain drumming on the roof. He was very conscious now of his wet socks. He rocked his feet. Squish-squish.

‘Good grief!’ he said to himself miserably.

Then Alfreida was back, and he felt a wild desire to giggle again. She was wrapped in a long dark robe of some sort that made her look rounder than ever, and on her head she wore a turban in violent shades of green and orange, with trembling yellow fringe. But her face was composed and confident. She pulled up a chair opposite him and from under the robe produced a small crystal ball on a wooden base, which she sat down on the table between them. ‘You’ll have to be very quiet, dearie,’ she warned. ‘I can’t go into a trance if there’s noise.’ She placed her stubby fingers around the ball and closed her eyes.

************

When Alfreida spoke, it wasn’t with her normal voice at all. She looked right at him with empty black eyes and she said gruffly, ‘Well, what do you want?’

Hercules tried to answer, swallowed, tried again, and managed to squeak out: ‘I want to speak to Midas Goody!’

‘Somebody here wants to speak to you first,’ said the gruff voice coming out of Alfreida’s mouth. There was a brief silence and then a new, higher voice spoke.

‘If you’re going to go around quoting me, for pity’s sake do it properly!’ said the new voice waspishly. ‘If there’s anything I can’t abide, it’s to be misquoted.’

Hercules Feltwright’s mouth dropped open. ‘What?’ he goggled. ‘Who’s that?’

The voice ignored his question. ‘You actors are all alike,’ it complained. ‘Always trying to improve on the play. ‘Where the sea bucks,’ indeed! ‘Where the bee sucks,’ you ninny!’”

(pages 85-88)

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And oh, just for good measure:

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/shakespeare/where_bee_sucks.html