I Capture the Castle

by Dodie Smith

It was late autumn, very gentle and golden. I loved the quiet-coloured fields of stubble and the hazy water meadows.

How well I remember that run through the stillness, the smell of wet stone and wet weeds as we crossed the bridge, the moment of excitement before we stepped in at the little door! Once through, we were in the cool dimness of the gatehouse passage. That was where I first felt the castle – it is the place where one is most conscious of the great weight of stone above and around one. I was too young to know much of history and the past, for me the castle was one in a fairy tale; and the queer heavy coldness was so spell-like that

On our left, instead of the grey walls and towers we had been expecting, was a long house of whitewashed plaster and herring-boned brick, veined by weather-bleached wood. It had all sorts of odd little lattice windows, bright gold from the sunset, and the attic gable looked as if it might fall forward at any minute. This belonged to a different kind of fairy tale – it was just my idea of a ‘Hansel and Gretel’ house and for a second I feared a witch inside

It is a very pretty village and has the unlikely name of Godsend, a corruption of Godys End, after the Norman knight, Etienne de Godys, who built Belmotte Castle. Our castle – I mean the moated one, on to which our house is built – is called Godsend, too; it was built by a later de Godys.

we each leaned out of a window to smell the sweet country smell – you don’t notice it unless you have been away.

wonderful to wake up in the morning with things to look forward to!

There was a wonderful atmosphere of gentle age, a smell of flowers and beeswax, sweet yet faintly sour and musty; a smell that makes you feel very tender towards the past.

the mysterious old-house smell

rich, mysterious scent, not a bit like flowers.

I leaned against the carved banisters and listened to the music and felt quite different from any way I have ever felt before – softer, very beautiful and as if a great many men were in love w...

While I was lying awake re-swimming the moat

‘Midsummer Eve’ scent;

these last opulent weeks.

– I love those early minutes of a fire, the crackles and snappings, the delicate flickers, the first sharp whiff of smoke.

‘Sheep May Safely Graze’.

And they are like a drug, one needs them oftener and oftener and has to make them more and more exciting – until at last one’s imagination won’t work at all. It comes back after a few days, though.

crème de menthe

It is strange what surroundings can do to clothes – I had washed and ironed my green dress the day before and thought it very nice, but in Rose’s room it seemed cheap and ordinary.

I watched the sheep peacefully nibbling the grass,

St John’s Wood before; it is a fascinating place with quiet, tree-lined roads and secret-looking houses, most of them old

– I was so happy that I wanted to be kind to everyone in the world.

where we stood counting scents and sounds.

Gradually the dark sky paled until it looked like far away smoke. There was no colour anywhere; the cottages were chalk drawing on grey paper.

everything is already created, by the first cause – call it God, if you like; everything is already there to be found.’

Berceuse from Stravinsky’s ‘The Firebird’.