I Capture the Castle

by Dodie Smith

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.

One rather nice thing is the carved wooden window-seat—I am thankful there is no way of selling that. It is built into the thickness of the castle wall, with a big mullioned window above it.

Perhaps I ought to have counted Miss Blossom as a piece of furniture. She is a dressmaker’s dummy of most opulent figure with a wire skirt round her one leg. We are a bit silly about Miss Blossom—we pretend she is real. We imagine her to be a woman of the world, perhaps a barmaid in her youth. She says things like “Well, dearie, that’s what men are like,” and “You hold out for your marriage lines.”

In the end, Miss Marcy took the middle pages out of her library record, which gave us a pleasant feeling that we were stealing from the government,

Rose says I am always crediting people with emotions I should experience myself in their situation, but I am sure I had a real flash of intuition then.

“Which would be nicest—Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?”

I think Jane with a touch of Charlotte.

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.

While I have been writing I have lived in the past, the light of it has been all around me—first the golden light of autumn, then the silver light of spring and then the strange light, grey but exciting, in which I see the historic past. But now I have come back to earth and rain is beating on the attic window, an icy draught is blowing up the staircase and Ab has gone downstairs and left my stomach cold.

I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold.

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

It was a wonderful dinner with real champagne (lovely, rather like very good ginger ale without the ginger). But I wish I could have had that food when I wasn’t at a party, because you can’t notice food fully when you are being polite.

It was pleasant being by myself in the house—one gets the feel of a house much better alone.

Dear me, dancing is peculiar when you really think about it. If a man held your hand and put his arm round your waist without its being dancing, it would be most important; in dancing, you don’t even notice it—well, only a little bit.

histrionically

laconic

assignations

efficacious,

But green-houses always give me a waiting, expectant sort of feeling.

I do loathe morosity.” It was no moment to tell her there is no such word; anyway, I rather liked it.

histrionic,

I do call it a sign of a beautiful nature if a girl who is in love and surrounded by all that splendour is lonely for her sister.

Ab has just walked in, mewing—it must be tea-time; that cat has a clock in his stomach.

One of my worst longings to cry has come over me. I am going to run down the mound grinning and singing to fight it off.

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.”