Worth A Read #1 - "I Capture The Castle" by Dodie Smith

Funnier than Jane Austen, less predictable than Bridget Jones.

Romola Garai (Cassandra) with Henry Cavill (Stephen) in the 2003 film version.

The term “Young Adult book” did not come into regular parlance until the late sixties, and then only really in academic circles. I have to admit I’d never heard it until the late nineties.

Ages before that, in 1948, successful playwright Dodie Smith published her first book I Capture The Castle, which I regard as the first YA novel until somebody points out an earlier one that I missed, which I expect will be about half an hour after this piece is published.

Her husband was a conscientious objector, refusing to join the armed forces on moral grounds. They were mockingly called “conshies” by some, often men in reserved occupations, too young or too old, who had absolutely no chance of being conscripted themselves.

The couple emigrated to the USA to avoid any unpleasantness, which I find perfectly understandable.

I also quite like the notion that people could once move freely TO the USA to escape a conflict.

Dodie was very homesick in California. After all, she had left behind a successful West End career.

In the time-honoured fashion of writers throughout history, she tackled adversity by writing, and produced I Capture The Castle in California in ‘a fever of nostalgia’ for England as she put it.

The prose is far more controlled than you may think it would be under these circumstance, and far from purple.

Brideshead Revisited, for example, published four years previously and rightly regarded as a classic, is a far more sentimental work by the admission of its author Evelyn Waugh.

In the foreword to later printings of the book, he is on record as saying he wishes he had toned it down a bit.

I think he may have put it much better than that but my beaten-up copy of Brideshead is somewhere in the garage, and I dursn’t go in there for love nor money.

I Capture The Castle is a charming, funny and poignant novel concerning the Mortmain family, the name being a reference to the Marchmain family in Brideshead.

The book is written in the form of the diary of 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, who lives a poverty-stricken existence in a drafty, rundown castle with her older sister Rose, younger brother Thomas, enigmatic author father James and his younger wife, free spirit Topaz.

Cassandra’s mother passed away a few years previously.

Although it is not specifically defined as such, James appears to be suffering from depression, initiated perhaps by his failure to find it in himself to write a follow-up to his only successful book thus far, a modernist novel called Jacob Wrestling. Although spending eight months in prison for attacking a policeman when charged with the Wodehousian crime of threatening his wife with a cake-knife may not have helped either.

“Father explained in court that killing a woman with our silver cake-knife would be a long weary business entailing sawing her to death; and he was completely exonerated of any intention of slaying Mother.”

The family is completed by Stephen, son of the late maid of the household who has known Cassandra since they were four years old and is in love with her. He is a comforting, brooding presence throughout who has nominally been in the employ of the family since childhood, but does not receive any wage beyond board and lodging, and indeed is often the breadwinner.

The family are just about making ends meet through James’ irregular royalties, an understanding landlord, the kindness of friends, notably the local vicar, selling their furniture and other possessions, and no little guile on the part of Topaz, aided by Rose and Cassandra.

The family deal with their genteel poverty with good humour combined with practicality. None of the women, nor Thomas, get depressed about their situation . Instead they take steps to improve it.

Their Bohemian existence, cosy but ultimately unsustainable, is upended by the arrival of new landlords in the form of two young, handsome American brothers Simon and Neil Cotton.

Cassandra writes at this point that the previous landlord had not charged the family any rent at all for years, and indeed sent them a ham at Christmas, but that last Christmas, the first after he died:

“Sadly we missed the ham”.

What follows is, among other things, a superior rom-com, on a timeline somewhere between Pride And Prejudice and Bridget Jones’ Diary.

And yes, there is plenty of scope for debating whether the reader is #teamsimon, #teamneil or #teamstephen. I know exactly who I was rooting for, and why.

Who does our 17-year-old hero end up with? Nuh uh. No spoilers here, except to say that the plot takes a few unexpected turns before the end.

The dogs have the rather magnificent names Héloïse and Abelard, named after a married twelfth-century couple who were important dissenting figures in the medieval Church. Héloïse, in particular, is regarded as an icon by modern feminists.

The sisters make regular references to their story being like a novel. At one point they debate whether they are living in a Jane Austen world with a hint of Charlotte Bronte, or a Bronte world with a touch of Austen.

This is a superb piece of misdirection on Smith’s part. In truth the family are living in a modernist novel with a touch of Bronte AND Austen. Or, to put it another way, a YA novel.

I won’t give away the ending here but it did not disappoint, put it that way.

The book was well received on publication but was generally regarded by critics as a piece of romantic fiction, pure and simple, when in fact even a cursory reading shows that it is so much more than that.

And although I Capture The Castle’s reputation grew during Dodie Smith’s lifetime, she was more than a little miffed about this at the time.

“Sod ‘em all, Pongo, next time I’ll just write a book about you.”