SUSSEX AND SARK

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 52, 29 August 1925, Page 17

SUSSEX AND SARK

"Tha George and The Crown." By Sheik. Kaye-Smith. London and Melbourne: Cassell and Co., Ltd. The County of Sussex and the Island of Sark are the backgrounds for thia powerful melodrama. The title itself is derived from two hostclries, in the same street, and opposite to each other, but differing in character as their licensees and the sons of the licensees differed. The Crown was kept by James Munk, and was on essentially farm and business man's house; The George was a "pub," and was favoured with the maagre- patronage of the farm labourer and other workers in the district. The Crown was steadily improving in returns and importance, and The George was as steadily going down hill, and its proprietor was bo in name only, being up to his eyes in debt to his brewers. Tha Crown was kept by James Munk—and properly kept; Tile Georga was nominally kept, by Thomas Sheather, but his Sarquoise wife and his son Daniel kept Thomas, wlio loved nothing more than to ornament the bar and conduct or con- ' done a quiet little bookrnaking enter- i prise, which, by the way, proved his ; undoingi I

The interest of the reader is at one» arrested by the sons of these men, Dan Sheather and Ernley Munk. Their stations and educational advantages were widely different, yet the two lads had passed through the crucible of the ,war, they ■were fond of each other, and as they had played and fought together, bo they grew up to understand each other. Then both fell in love with the one girl, Belle Shakford, a local farmer's daughter, described as of a "floppy beauty.' Ernley married her, but not • before he had to for the sake of decency, and after the engagement had been broken off and Daniel had magnanimously taken the, girl, well knowing from her own admission that she was about to bear a child to Ernley. All this is in the beginning, and Miss Kaye Smith is far too adroit an. artist to labour the point of Belle's declension. What she does is to set a halo on Dan Sheather. When Belle marries and settles down at The Crown, Dan goes to hia mother's people in Sark. They have only a little less contempt for an Englishman than they have for the men of Jersey or Guorasfrr, lint when he brings to Sark a friendless and homeless Jersey girl, whom he met in a tavern, the Sark folk raise no particular objection, and in their rough way make things as agreeable as they know how. The treatment of this event in Dan's life is where Miss Kaye-Smith rises to tne very pinnacle of literary ai+. The marriage, the wedded life, tbc birth of Helier, Dan's child, born in wedlock, and ths death of the girl-mother form tho most touching sections in the book. Horo is displayed the fine art of writing, and the best of it is that probability undergoes no strain whatsoever.

But Dan leaves Sark and his mother's people, leaves too sleeping- on the bleak island his little wife. He goes back to Sussex, taking the baby Helier with him. Sees Belle once more, and once more the old yearning for her returns. But it is firmly held in leash. Still Dan realises that Belle is not happy. He ventures by virtue of his old esteem for her husband to speak to Ernley about it, and says to him: "All she wants is for you .to be kind and good to her, and speak* kind, and care for her and tha children, and understand all' the trouble she- has with them and the place. She doesn't want much,, but maybe more thflm you can spare from yourself." • ■

Belle is well supplied with all she wants in the way of dresses, money, position, and this world's gifts, and she has children/but not happiness. At a critical time she leaves The Crown, ostensibly to go into Newhaven,' where .Dan is living- with his baby boy, at the same time housing his father who, sail-or-like, is "looking for a ship." She is prepared to leave Ernley and live with Dan, and says as much. But Since ho had come back he had not loved her as in the old days, Vjut in a different, -unhappier way. He loved her for herself and himself only. He , loved her as other men had loved her before Emley, and to-night his lovo for her was just a flame, seeking to devour—not the-flame of the hearth where the food is cooked and life made warm and secure, but the flame of the burning house, which seeks only to destroy and is the enemy , of the hearth upon which the dead, burnt house shall fall. He told Belle in the morning ". . , I'd have loved you as my wife and have made you a good husband, but I can't go loving you outside of marriage. I'm not made that way. The only woman I've ever loved is Rose, just because she was my wife."

"Tha George and The Crown" is a novel conspicuous for its deep humanity, and as such claims respectful attention. But there are some fine passages in it of ■the deep sense of pictorial' values that characterises Miss Kaye-Smith's other novels. Her description of Sark in wintor is wonderful, not only for its truth, but its poetry. Here is her description of the times when the fogs come down on the Channel Islands, and it shows how she utilises local colour to impart the necessary atmosphere to her narrative :—

There was one continual whito blindness on' tho land. Those were days in which sight, touch, .and smell wore sunk in one clammy, salt whitoness, and the only sense which lived was sound, as the foghorns hummed from a score of rocks. There was tha eternal moan of Blanchard, out beyond Les Abimes; thero was the thunder of Platte Fougerc—slower, licrccr, seeming to shake the sea; and .hero was SarkVown voice at Point .Kobcrt, which inland was like the drone of a mosquito, but on tho const w.as like tho voice of a trumpet br.-i.y-mg judgment—tho judgment of the oast coast of Sail;. Daniel would sit on the cliffs, listening while it swelled with the echoes that, poured into it till at last, every cave and rock and clilf-face roared with it, and out in tho fogs upon i!io vain,- thn Grand Moiu shook j(, „„(, o f |,; s ca}: || M _

Would r.ollr in real life have dorm this oi- would Krr>v have- done (hat or <Mi S ht l\:uirl („ h'avr. f | lllle the other are C|iic:<tmir.< • that, the reader of lm(h foxes will ask, and has a ri-l,( to as k JJut the answers must be furnished from individual experiences. Whatever the result there will probably be complete agreement on the profound insight into human nature, the good taste and the consummate skill displayed by Miss Jvaye-Smith in this ably-written novel.