I Capture the Castle

by Dodie Smith

It ought to be good for my style to dash along without much thought, as up to now my stories have been very stiff and self-conscious. The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny.

I feel quite unreasonably happy this minute, watching them both; knowing I can go and join them in the warmth, yet staying here in the cold.

As she only cries about once a year I really ought to have gone over and comforted her, but I wanted to set it all down here. I begin to see that writers are liable to become callous.

I don’t in the least know if she meant to be funny—but then, I realize more and more how vague she has become for me. Even when I remember things she said, I can’t recall the sound of her voice. And though I can still see the shape of her that day huddled on the steps, her back view when we were in the car, her brown tweed suit and squashy felt hat, I can’t visualize her face at all. When I try to, I just see the photograph I have of her.

this is bitter because it means we meet no men at all, not even artists.

My imagination longs to dash ahead and plan developments; but I have noticed that when things happen in one’s imaginings, they never happen in one’s life, so I am curbing myself.

I look across stubble and ploughed fields and drenched winter wheat to the village, where the smoke from the chimneys is going straight up in the still air. Everything is pale gold and washed clean, and hopeful.

The last stage of a bath, when the water is cooling and there is nothing to look forward to, can be pretty disillusioning. I expect alcohol works much the same way.

The originators among writers—perhaps, in a sense, the only true creators—dip deep and bring up one perfect work; complete, not a link in a chain. Later, they dip again—for something as unique. God may have created other worlds, but he obviously didn’t go on adding to this one.”

Rose’s exuberance has risen higher and higher. I regret to say that she is now whistling.

Oh, it was the most glorious morning! I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer. It certainly helps one to believe in Him.

I tried to realize that I shall die myself one day; but I couldn’t believe it—and then I had a flash that when it really happens I shall remember that moment and see again the high Suffolk sky over the old, old Godsend graves. Thinking of death—strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off—made me feel happier than ever.

“People’s clothes ought to be buried with them,” I said. “They oughtn’t to be left behind to be despised.” “I’m not despising them,” said Rose. “Some of these suits are made of wonderful cloth.” But she was bundling them into the trunks in a somehow insulting way. I made myself take them out and fold them carefully, and had a mental picture of Aunt Millicent looking relieved.

that time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.

Oh, I could think of lines that rhymed and scanned but that is all they were. I know now that is all my poems ever were, yet I used to feel I could leap over the moon when I had made one up. I miss that rather.

I have been resting, just staring down at the castle. I wish I could find words—serious, beautiful words—to describe it in the afternoon sunlight; the more I strive for them, the more they utterly elude me. How can one capture the pool of light in the courtyard, the golden windows, the strange long-ago look, the look that one sees in old paintings? I can only think of “the light of other days,” and I didn’t make that up.…..

“And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.”

It was the queerest feeling—changing the man I had imagined to the real man. I had made him so fascinating, and of course he isn’t really—though very, very nice; I know that now.

“I’m wondering. Shall we say it’s perfect for the sea and the sunlight—and the other Rose is perfect for candlelight? And perhaps what’s most perfect of all is to find there are several Roses?”

I go backwards and forwards, recapturing the past, wondering about the future—and, most unreasonably, I find myself longing for the past more than for the future. I remind myself of how often we were cold and hungry with barely a rag to our backs, and then I count the blessings that have descended on us; but I still seem to fancy the past most. This is ridiculous. And it is ridiculous that I should have this dull, heavy, not exactly unhappy but—well, no kind of feeling when I ought to be blissfully happy. Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.

It is like a flowering in the heart, a stirring of wings—oh, if only I could write poetry, as I did when I was a child! I have tried, but the words were as cheap as a sentimental song. So I tore them up. I must set it down simply—everything that happened to me yesterday—with no airs and graces. But I long to be a poet, to pay tribute.…

The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return—that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth.

Surely it isn’t normal for anyone so miserably in love to eat and sleep so well? Am I a freak? I only know that I am miserable, I am in love, but I raven food and sleep.

But the next morning, the weight on my heart was the worst I had ever known. It didn’t move at all while I got our breakfasts, and by the time Stephen and Thomas had gone and father had shut himself in the gatehouse, it was so bad that I found myself going round leaning against walls—I can’t think why misery makes me lean against walls, but it does.

My voice sounded despairing and I suddenly felt lonelier than I ever remember feeling, and more deeply sad. Everything I looked at was grey—grey water in the moat, great grey towering walls, remote grey sky; even the wheat, which was between green and gold, seemed colourless.

You lose yourself in something beyond yourself and it’s a lovely rest.”

Of course, what my mind’s eye was trying to tell me was that the Vicar and Miss Marcy had managed to by-pass the suffering that comes to most people—he by his religion, she by her kindness to others. And it came to me that if one does that, one is liable to miss too much along with the suffering—perhaps, in a way, life itself. Is that why Miss Marcy seems so young for her age—why the Vicar, in spite of all his cleverness, has that look of an elderly baby?

And the feel of the Park itself was most strange and interesting—what I noticed most was its separateness; it seemed to be smiling and amiable, but somehow aloof from the miles and miles of London all around. At first I thought this was because it belonged to an older London—Victorian, eighteenth century, earlier than that. And then, as I watched the sheep peacefully nibbling the grass, it came to me that Hyde Park has never belonged to any London—that it has always been, in spirit, a stretch of the countryside; and that it thus links the Londons of all periods together most magically—by remaining forever unchanged at the heart of the ever-changing town.

And what I thought about most was luxury. I had never realized before that it is more than just having things; it makes the very air feel different. And I felt different, breathing that air: relaxed, lazy, still sad but with the edge taken off the sadness. Perhaps the effect wears off in time, or perhaps you don’t notice it if you are born to it, but it does seem to me that the climate of richness must always be a little dulling to the senses. Perhaps it takes the edge off joy as well as off sorrow. And though I cannot honestly say I would ever turn my back on any luxury I could come by, I do feel there is something a bit wrong in it. Perhaps that makes it all the more enjoyable.

I shall never forget it—the thick carpet, the brocade-covered walls, the bright lights staring back from the gilt mirrors; everything was so luxurious—and so meaningless, so lifeless.

“I’ve got to be needed, Cassandra—I always have been. Men have either painted me, or been in love with me, or just plain ill-treated me—some men have to do a lot of ill-treating, you know, it’s good for their work; but one way or another, I’ve always been needed. I’ve got to inspire people, Cassandra—it’s my job in life.”

Oh, darling Topaz! She calls Mrs. Cotton’s interest in father celebrity collecting, and never sees that her own desire to inspire men is just another form of it—and a far less sincere one. For Mrs. Cotton’s main interests really are intellectual—well, social-intellectual—while my dear beautiful stepmother’s intellectualism is very, very bogus. The real Topaz is the one who cooks and scrubs and sews for us all. How mixed people are—how mixed and nice!

You can’t trammel the creative mind.” “Why not?” said Thomas. “His creative mind’s been untrammelled for years without doing a hand’s-turn. Let’s see what trammelling does for it.”

“Pity there isn’t a good sunrise for you,” said Simon. But no sunrise I ever saw was more beautiful than when the thick grey mist gradually changed to a golden haze.

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can. Long before we got back to the castle, with all my heart and for my own heart’s ease as well as his, I would have given her back to him if I could.

No one will ever know why a creator creates the way he does. Anyway, your father had a very distinguished forerunner. God made the universe an enigma.” I said, “And very confusing it’s been for everybody. I don’t see why father had to copy Him.”

“Because there’s so much that just can’t be said plainly. Try describing what beauty is—plainly—and you’ll see what I mean.” Then he said that art could state very little—that its whole business was to evoke responses. And that without innovations and experiments—such as father’s—all art would stagnate. “That’s why one ought not to let oneself resent them—though I believe it’s a normal instinct, probably due to subconscious fear of what we don’t understand.”

Then we spoke of the autumn—he hoped he would be in time to catch a glimpse of it in New England. “Is it more beautiful than this?” I asked. “No. But it’s less melancholy. So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.”

There was mist on Midsummer Eve, mist when we drove into the dawn. He said he would come back. Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.