The Doves' Nest, and Other Stories

L. Lives Like Logs of Driftwood: This wants to be a long, very well written story. The men are important, especially the lesser man. It wants a great deal of working ... newspaper office.

N. Z. A Weak Heart: Roddie on his bike in the evening, with his hands in his pockets, doing marvels by that dark tree at the corner of May Street.

L. Widowed: Geraldine and Jimmie, a house overlooking Sloane Street and Square. Wearing those buds at her breast. “Married or not married” ... From autumn to spring.

N. Z. Our Maude: Husban͜d ͜and͟ wi͜fe p͟la͜y du͟ets:͜ A͟nd ͜a o͟ne a͟ two ͟a three a one a two three one! His white waistcoats. Wifeling and Mahub! What a girl you are!

N. Z. At Karori: The little lamp. I seen it. And then they were silent.

N. Z. Aunt Anne: Her life with the Tannhaüser overture.

Of these stories only the one called At Karori and subsequently entitled The Doll’s House was finished, three days later, on October 30. Of some of the remaining stories there are considerable fragments, of three of them I have so far discovered no trace at all. All the fragments I have found which indubitably belong to any of these stories I have included in this volume. I have also included other fragments which seemed to possess a separate existence, but I have reserved most of the shorter pieces for publication with her Journal.

Between October 1921, when the original plan of this volume was sketched, and the end of January 1922, she finished other stories which she had not foreseen. These were A Cup of Tea, Honeymoon, Taking the Veil, and the long, unfinished, yet somehow complete piece, A Married Man’s Story. In January she also began The Doves’ Nest, a story which was particularly important to her, and with the writing of which—at least at the beginning—she was satisfied. She wrote in her Journal on New Year’s Day, 1922:

Wrote The Doves’ Nest this afternoon. I was in no mood to write; it seemed impossible. Yet, when I had finished three pages, they ‘were all right!’ This is a proof (never to be too often proved) that when one has thought out a story nothing remains but the labour.

She worked on and off at The Doves’ Nest during the following summer also. Unfortunately I can find no trace of her own manuscript. There is a fair, clean copy, typewritten by herself, of the portion printed in this book, but nothing more.

In February 1922 began three months of an exacting medical treatment in Paris, during which work became more and more a physical impossibility. Nevertheless, at the beginning of this time, on February 20th, she wrote The Fly. On her return to Switzerland in June she tried to resume work on The Doves’ Nest and she wrote the scenario of a play; but again physical weakness made work in the mountains impossible. To ease the strain on her heart she descended into the valley in June. At Sierre she wrote more of The Doves’ Nest, much more, alas, than remains; she also began the unfinished piece called Father and the Girls and finished the short story called The Canary. These were the last of the stories written by her which can be exactly dated. There is reason, however, to believe that the passage of the story called Six Years After which ends with the words: “Can one do nothing for the dead? And for a long time the answer had been—Nothing!” was actually the last piece written by her. It seems to belong to the autumn of 1922, when she had, for a time, practically abandoned writing.

It was not, however, because of her physical weakness that she stopped writing in the late summer of 1922. The power of her spirit to triumph over the frailty of her body had been proved over and over again. She stopped writing deliberately, not under compulsion. She felt that her whole attitude to life needed to be renewed, and she determined that she would write no more until it had been renewed.

Perhaps an idea of the way her mind—or rather her whole being—was moving, may be gleaned from some extracts from her journal. At first, her dissatisfaction with her work took shape in a feeling that she was not exerting the whole of her powers or expressing the whole of her knowledge in her writings. As early as July 1921, when she was still engaged on the last of the stories for “The Garden Party,” she wrote:

July 1921. I finished Mr. and Mrs. Dove yesterday. I am not altogether pleased with it. It’s a little bit made up. It’s not inevitable. I meant to imply that those two may not be happy together—that that is the kind of reason for which a young girl marries. But have I done so? I don’t think so. Besides it’s not strong enough. I want to be nearer—far nearer than that. I want to use all my force, even when I am taking a fine line. And I have a sneaking notion that I have, at the end, used the doves unwarrantably. Tu sais ce que je veux dire. I used them to round off something—didn’t I? Is that quite my game? No, it’s not. It’s not quite the kind of truth I’m after. Now for Susannah. All must be deeply felt.

And a few days later she wrote:

July 23. Finished An Ideal Family yesterday. It seems to me better than the Doves, but still it’s not good enough. I worked at it hard enough, God knows, and yet I didn’t get the deepest truth out of the idea, even once. What is this feeling? I feel again that this kind of knowledge is too easy for me; it’s even a kind of trickery. I know so much more. It looks and smells like a story, but I wouldn’t buy it. I don’t want to possess it—to live with it. No. Once I have written two more, I shall tackle something different—a long story—_At the Bay_, with more difficult relationships. That’s the whole problem.

Yet a little later her vision of the cause of her own dissatisfaction deepened, and she began to define it in terms—of the insufficient clarity of her own spirit, and of the incompleteness of her inward life—which were to become more and more familiar.

Well, I must confess I have had an idle day—God knows why. All was to be written, but I just didn’t write it. I thought I would, but I felt tired after tea, and rested instead. Is it good or bad in me to behave so? I have a sense of guilt, but at the same time I know that to rest is the very best thing I can do. And for some reason there is a kind of booming in my head—which is horrid. But marks of earthly degradation still pursue me. I am not crystal clear. Above all else, I do still lack application. It’s not right. There is so much to do, and I do so little. Look at the stories that wait and wait, just at the threshold. Why don’t I let them in? And their place would be taken by others who are lurking beyond, just out there—waiting for the chance.

Next day. Yet take this morning, for instance. I don’t want to write anything. It’s grey; it’s heavy and dull. And short stories seem unreal, and not worth doing. I don’t want to write? I want to live. What does one mean by that? It’s not too easy to say. But there you are!

Aug. 21. All this that I write, all that I am, is on the border of the sea. It’s a kind of playing. I want to put all my force behind it, but somehow I cannot.

And again in the autumn of the year her incessant effort towards an inward purity—who but she would have dreamed that she lacked it?—as a condition of soul essential to writing as she purposed to write, becomes still more manifest.

Oct. 16. Another radiant day. J. is typing my last story, The Garden Party, which I finished on my birthday. It took me nearly a month to ‘recover’ from At the Bay. I made at least four false starts. But I could not get away from the sound of the sea and Beryl fanning her hair at the window. These things would not die down. But now I am not at all sure about that story. It seems to me it is a little ‘wispy’—not what it might have been. The G. P. is better. But that is not good enough, either.... The last few days, what one notices more than anything is the blue. Blue sky, blue mountains—all is a heavenly blueness! And clouds of all kinds—wings, soft white clouds, almost hard little golden islands, great mock-mountains. The gold deepens on the slopes. In fact, in sober fact, it is perfection. But the late evening is the time of times. Then, with that unearthly beauty before one, it is not hard to realize how far one has to go. To write something that will be worthy of that rising moon, that pale light. To be ‘simple’ enough as one would be simple before God.

Nov. 21. Since then I have only written The Doll’s House. A bad spell has been on me. I have begun two stories, but then told them and they felt betrayed. It is absolutely fatal to give way to this temptation.... Today I begin to write, seriously, _The Weak Heart_—a story which fascinates me deeply. What I feel it needs so peculiarly is a very subtle variation of tense from the present to the past and back again—and softness, lightness, and the feeling that all is in bud, with a play of humour over the character of Roddie. And the feeling of the Thorndon Baths, the wet, moist, oozy ... no, I know how it must be done.

May I be found worthy to do it! Lord, make me crystal clear for thy light to shine through.

The two stories which she told and then was forced to abandon “because they felt betrayed” were Honesty and All Serene. Of Weak Heart, as she subsequently called it, only fragments remain. There is the opening copied in careful writing, a few hurriedly written sentences from the middle—themes, as it were, hastily noted—and then, obviously written at top speed and decipherable only with great difficulty, the end.