Magical Classics: 'The Stone Cage' by Nicholas Stuart Gray

Kate Forsyth writes about a much-loved childhood classic: 

I first read Nicholas Stuart Gray’s novel The Stone Cage when I was about eleven. It was an utter revelation to me. 

The Stone Cage is a retelling of the Rapunzel fairy tale, told from the point of view of the witch’s cat. It was the first fairy tale retelling I had ever read, and I remember being amazed that a writer could take an old, well-known story and turn it into something utterly new and surprising. 

I was also utterly enchanted by the story itself, and particularly by the characters of Tomlyn the cat, and Marshall, the witch’s raven. One was sleek, self-assured, coolly amused, and tantalised by the bewitching power of sorcery. The other was hunched and tattered and miserable, with a great heart.

What I remember most about The Stone Cage was the absolute assurance of the voice. It sounded exactly how I imagined a cat would speak:

‘My name is Tomlyn. I am very beautiful. Marshall says I am spiteful and wicked and a barbarian to boot. He’s jealous of my thick grey fur, my white chin and breast, and the snowy end of my tail. I suppose he can’t help being envious, the great rusty-black thing! He’s got a big, blunt beak, and stubby wings, and tiny little eyes... He’s old and stupid and a coward; with an endless flow of long words that he can’t possibly understand.’

I had always been fascinated by ‘Rapunzel’, and reading The Stone Cage made me want to write my own retelling of the tale. I even had a go at it, when I was in my mid-teens. And, yes, my story had a cat in it too. Many years later, I did write my own retelling of the tale, though my novel Bitter Greens is very, very different. 

Nicholas Stuart Gray was born on 23 October 1922, in Scotland. From a young age, he made up stories and plays to amuse his brothers and sisters, and to try and escape his unhappy childhood. He described his mother as ‘beautiful and terrifying’.‘She was a megalomaniac,’ he said in an interview in 1973. ‘We grew up terribly unsure of ourselves and doubtful of other people, always prepared to be cut down … We were always ugly, stupid, gullible, useless people in her eyes.’

Gray admitted that the character of the witch in his play The Wrong Side of the Moon (1966) is ‘almost a biography’ of his mother and I wonder if she influenced the character of the witch in The Stone Cage, who was utterly egocentric and had no feelings of remorse for any of her actions.  ‘The sad thing about people like (my mother) is they are completely alone,’ Gray said in the same interview. 

Gray left home at the age of fifteen, finding work as an actor and stage manager. His first play was produced before he was twenty years old, and he turned to writing for children in 1949 after seeing a hundred or more children queuing up for the cinema and wondering why there was no comparable entertainment for them in the theatre. He wrote the play Beauty and the Beast as a result, and it was shown at the Mercury Theatre in London in 1950. 

Gray wanted, he said, ‘to give the children a sense of magic. Nobody attends to this enough. They give them too much realism. They can see it all on the box, they can see frightful things there. But they’re not being given a world to escape to … the world of the imagination. Children must have an escape line somewhere.’

His first novel, Over the Hills to Fabylon, was published in 1954. It is about a city that can fly away across the mountains any time the king feels his home is in danger. 

Other important works include The Seventh Swan, which tells what happened to the boy left with one swan wing instead of an arm; Down in the Cellar, an eerie story of  a family of children who find a gateway to another world in their basement;  Grimbold's Other World, about a black cat that teaches a boy about the world of the night; The Apple Stone, which tells of the adventures of a family of children who find a magic stone, and, of course, The Stone Cage, published 50 years ago this year.

Gray’s story line follows the basic plot of the well-known Grimm fairy tale, which had been translated into English in 1882 by Lucy Crane. Her translation was based upon the 1857 edition of the Grimm’s Kinder-und-Hausmärchen, in which the character of Rapunzel is at its most passive and childlike. There is no mention of any sex, or pregnancy, or birth of twins in that tale, and Rapunzel betrays herself to the witch (rather stupidly), by complaining how much heavier she is to pull up than the prince.

Within the narrow confines of that tale, Gray created a story that celebrates the redemptive power of love. Tomlyn the cat and Marshall the raven – natural enemies and rivals for the witch’s rare expressions of affection – are united in their desire to save Rapunzel. They protect her from the witch, an old, ugly and malicious woman who craves power. 

The story begins when the witch tricks a woodcutter into giving up his newborn daughter. He asks her what she intends to do with the baby. ‘Mother Gothel answered the man’s question in a small and faraway voice: “I will teach her my craft. Teach her to be the greatest and wickedest witch in all the world.”’

However, her plans are thwarted when Tomlyn and Marshall lay a spell on the little girl so that she was unable to work magic.  Rapunzel grows to maturity, frustrating and angering the witch in her inability to remember even the simplest of spells.

Then the two conspirators bring a young man to the witch’s garden in the hope he would rescue Rapunzel, but unwittingly she betrays him and he is cast down from the tower and blinded. Again, the cat and the raven work to bring Rapunzel and the prince together again, even though Rapunzel has been banished to the dark side of the moon.

In the final confrontation, the raven tells the witch he no longer fears her. Rapunzel agrees, ‘very clearly and gently:

‘I’m not afraid of Mother Gothel, either.’

‘The witch gave a shrill cry … “You must fear me! You must! Sorcery can only thrive on fear.’

Rapunzel’s courage – and the bravery of her animal friends – together overcome the witch, who is transformed by the raven’s magic into a bare and lifeless-looking tree. There she must stay, ‘dead and dried, till a heart may grow inside.’

Rapunzel and her prince return to the human world, but the raven and the cat stay with the witch on the dark side of the moon, to look after her until she returns to being human.  In the final scene, Tomlyn the cat pours a few drops of water on the tree’s roots, and a small, green leaf uncurls from a bare twig. In this way, Nicholas Stuart Grey shows how the animals’ faithfulness and compassion to the witch, despite her wickedness, hold out the hope of her redemption.

Gray’s dramatic training shows in the swift, graceful pace, and the quick, vivid character sketches – not a word is ever wasted. The dialogue is brilliantly done, being clever, witty and poignant in turns. Tomlyn the witch’s cat steals every scene. He speaks and acts and thinks just like a cat should, and I was not at all surprised to discover that Gray is most probably the only person ever to write a biography of his own cats (The Boys,1968).  I also have a deep affection for Marshall the raven, and sympathise with his yearning to read, and his longing to love and be loved.

Haunting, whimsical, funny and heart-breaking, The Stone Cage is one of the most beautiful and profound books ever written for children. At its heart, The Stone Cage tells us that love, compassion and courage will win out over hatred, cruelty and cowardice, and that is a lesson that cannot be taught often enough. 

All quotes from The Pied Pipers: Interviews with the Influential Creators of Children’s Literature, 1973

Kate Forsyth's adult fantasy 'Bitter Greens', based on the fairytale 'Rapunzel', is published in the UK by Allison & Busby. Kate is the bestselling author of more than twenty books, ranging from picture books to poetry to novels for both children and adults. She has won numerous awards and been published in fourteen countries around the world. She lives by the sea in Sydney with her husband, three children, a rambunctious Rhodesian Ridgeback, a bad-tempered black cat, and many thousands of books. Her new novel, 'The Wild Girl', about the love affair between  Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild, is to be published in the UK in 2013, and you can visit her website at www.kateforsyth.com.au

Magical Classics: ‘The Strange Journeys of Colonel Polders’ by Lord Dunsany

This is the first of a series by me and a number of guests about magical never-to-be-forgotten books. The idea is to celebrate some wonderful older fantasy titles - with a wide definition of fantasy!  Some will be familiar, others I hope will be unfamiliar (so we can go and search them out!) The series is called 'Magical Classics' and there are only two criteria: each title will be at least 50 years old and it will have meant much to the person who has chosen it. Here is my opening piece, and I hope you will forgive a little autobiography...

Simpson's Cat - by Bill Wild

When I was about sixteen, we moved to a small village in Yorkshire, to live in a wonderfully rambling house with twenty rooms, three staircases and no electricity.  In winter, frost coated the insides of delicate windowpanes scrawled with the diamond-engraved names of previous inhabitants.  We couldn't afford to heat the house properly - indeed, apart from open fires, I don't suppose anyone had ever tried.  Draughts whistled under the doors, and the only warm place was the kitchen. 

In summer, the doors and windows stood open to let cats in, and stray bees, and the sounds of sheep bleating and curlews calling.  One day I brought my pony into the stone-flagged living room.  One night a bat flew into my bedroom through the open window and whirled around and around before finding its way out again.  Outside in the dark, I could hear the beck flowing quietly down the dale to join the Aire, and owls shrieking in the trees.

I was at that happy age when one is almost independent, yet with few responsibilities.  I was writing stories, about which I was blissfully uncritical.  And I could spend nearly all the rest of my time reading.  One day I borrowed from Skipton Public Library (yes, it’s still there) a drab, insignificant-looking little black cloth-bound book called ‘The Strange Journeys of Colonel Polders’ by Lord Dunsany, published in 1950.

I can’t remember now whether this was the first book by Lord Dunsany that I had read.  I may have already come across his full length fairytale ‘The King of Elfland’s Daughter’ (to which Neil Gaiman pays graceful tribute in ‘Stardust’).  At any rate, ‘The Strange Journeys of Colonel Polders’ turned out to be something quite different: difficult to categorise: not your average fantasy at all.  I read it, adored it, borrowed and re-borrowed it, and then one day it disappeared.  I never saw it in the library again. Perhaps it had been stolen by some less scrupulous fan.  And it was only a few years ago, decades later, that I finally tracked down another copy.   (Thank you, abebooks.com!)

It begins in that most Edwardian of settings, a gentleman’s club.  The eponymous hero, Colonel Polders, objects to the election of a new member, Pundit Sinadryana, ‘on the grounds that he was by several thousand miles outside the circle that was intended by the original founders…’  The colonel is stiff, racist, conservative, and aggressively disbelieving of the Pundit’s claim to possess the power of transmigration, to send a spirit travelling ‘to other lives’. 

“I should like to see you do it,” said the colonel…

“I will show you,” said Pundit Sinadryana.  And after what the colonel had just said it was difficult for him to decline the invitation; much as he wished to do so, not from any fear of the adventure, but because he did not like Pundit Sinadryana.

            “When?” said the colonel.

            “Tonight, if you like,” said the Pundit.

The experiment is tried.  The Pundit burns various powders, and chants a spell ‘low and musical right into the colonel’s face, of which we heard no clear word, nor did we wish to… “Well”, said the colonel, “I don’t seem to be doing much travelling.”’ 

But the next moment he falls asleep.  And shortly after that he’s snoring.  And when, moments later, he wakes up: ‘he stood up at once and walked out of the room without saying a word.’

By Janet's Foss - by Bill Wild

It’s left to the narrator and his friends, with the aid of many a glass of Malmsey wine and many a cigar, to coax from Colonel Polders the stories of the lives he has lived during the space of those few moments.  The poor colonel has been a fish, a fox, a dog, a moth, a pig, an eel, a tiger.  He has been a cat, a butterfly, a flea, a goose: a bat, an antelope and a mouse. At the end of each life, the colonel has died in his animal form, only to be reincarnated in the next.  In each life he has experienced sensory revelations, which of course are lost to him now he has returned to his own body.  And he recounts his experiences with a mixture of rapture and resentment at ‘that damned fellow Sinadryana’, that is both lyrical and extremely funny.  As a pig, he explains:

           

“…I couldn’t see very well what was going on, because of the high walls of the sty, but fortunately I had a very wet nose.”

            “A very wet nose?” exclaimed Charlie Meakin.

            “Yes,” said the colonel.  “One cannot smell anything without a good wide area that is always damp… No, it is very ample life that is led by a pig.”

As a fox, he lies in his earth waiting for evening, when he can hunt:

“And it is a curious thing, and you may possibly not believe me, but I waited without impatience.  One can hardly imagine waiting two or three hours for one’s dinner when one is hungry, without any impatience whatever.  But such was the case.

            “I lay there just enjoying the sound of the wind going by, and the quality of the air that I breathed, and the rounded shape of the smoothed earth where I was lying, which was so exactly suited to my needs…  A fern grew at the edge of the earth, and whenever the wind blew, it waved over across my view of the sky.  I watched it doing that while the sky’s colour changed slowly; and I felt no impatience with time.”

And as a hummingbird hawk-moth, he beats against a window:

“The glory of that light…was calling to me with music as well as beauty.  I darted towards it, and there was no barrier, no window I mean: nothing between me and that unearthly light glowing amongst melodies and irresistible calls.”

            “And it was a candle?” asked Charlie Meakin. 

           

“The Strange Journeys of Colonel Polders’ is a supremely happy book that celebrates the marvellous diversity of life.  Dunsany writes as though he knows himself what it’s like to be an eel or a moth or a pig.  I don’t suppose for a moment that a book like this could be published today.  It breaks all structural rules. There is only the slightest of plots, with one little twist at the end to round things off.  The book is barely more than a linked series of short pieces.  But in this case, for me, it doesn’t matter.  It’s the journeys that count, along with the semi-comical insights of the poor colonel, forever exiled from the abundant delights he has known. 

For years and years, while the book was lost to me, I remembered the image of the Colonel as a fox curled in his lair, watching ‘the white light at the end of that long earth turn to a glowing blue…’ 

I read this story at a golden age, and for me it is a golden book.

Moonlight in the Dale - by Bill Wild

All artwork by  Bill Wild (1903-1983) whom I knew. He lived and worked for many years in Malhamdale. Copyright: St Michael the Archangel, Kirkby Malham.