A REAL COTTAGE

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21536, 27 July 1935, Page 19

A REAL COTTAGE

Cottage Angles. By Norah James. J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd. 120 pp(s/- net.)

If many comments to be made about this book are negative, to be negative is to praise, because this quiet review of the English countryside has none of the rapturous assertiveness that was somewhat annoying in the rural discoveries of Mr Cecil Roberts and positively annoying in tne sophisticated ecstasies of Mr Beverley Nichols. "Cottage Angles" is unpretentious and unelaborated. It is moving and simple and true. This village has been left secluded by ribbon development, hikers, and buses. There is a wireless set in the inn, but its wonders are by many attributed to ordinary telegraphy. Miss James's friends — Bill, the'maker of the swimmingpool, the hotelkeeper, the "general," Mrs Carter, are neither perpetually bland nor perpetually st-'pid. For the most part they are pleasant people, helpful and easy to talk to, but now and then a chance remark reveals a strain of brutality or crudity that would prevent an observer much less sensitive than Miss James from being complacently sure of her understanding. It is not without design that the order of the seasons described here is summer, autumn, winter, spring. The sense of growth and hope is more present to the countryman than to the townsman, but the countryman is less disturbed by human changes and unrest.

There is a peace in the country which cannot be explained by silence, though it comes, perhaps, from the rhythm of life there. The rhythm never ceases, but you are aware of K from the time the cock begins to crow Its beat is heard all through the day It brings the plough horses to t standstill as they wait for their nosebaps. Until at last it brings the darkening of the sky, till the light fades out of the world, and the evening slips across the fields. And then, it brings th° stars out, and the men and beasts who have worked all day back to rest.

This small book could have been oadded out to double its present length, but, direct and simple and penetrating as it is, with delight or revelation on every page, it is complete and natural. Miss Gwen Raverat's woodcuts are as simple and direct as the written episodes and scenes which they illustrate.