Evening star., 1925-06-13
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY the Bo0kLoUer.

Kaye Smith in her novel, THE George |
and the Crown" Thomas Sheather, |
landlord of the George, the unprosper- |
Gus pub" Of Bullockdean in Sussex, |
has married a. Sark woman. This es-
tablishes in his family the not usual |
connection between Sussex and the
Channel Islands AS the years have |
passed Thomas himself has entirely |
cut loose from Sark and has even |
come to regret the youthful love |
which provided him with sharp |
tongued Kitty, his Sark wife. But the |
connection is re-eStablished by his son
Daniel, who, because of thWarted love. |
finds it desirable to leave his home in |
In the Ouse Valley and goes to his |
mothers relatives at Peche a Agneau, |
in the Island of Sark. Here he, too, |
christened with the English -Sark name |
Thomas Heller.
X X
The setting of the novel, which |
shifts between Sussex and Sark, is at
first BulloCkdean in the Ouse Valley, |
between Lewes and Newhaven. The
George and the Crown are the two
rival inns, across the road from each
other, and the Crown is as approved
by the neighborhood as the George is
disapproved.
THE stain on the Georges sign was
drunkenness, and, it was whispered,
betting, too" AS always in Sheila
kaye-Smith's novels, we feel the at
mosphere of the places Immediately
We see the lingering red in the
west" showing up the masses of
Fore Hill and Bullock Down, but the
rest of the Sky was dim, lightless
grey, pricked with a few stars, and
the valley beneath was grey, with the
river dark among the mists, save
where its waters held one glimmer [
the Shine" We go with Daniel and
Belle Shackford by moonlight out on
the downs, up the steep, chaIky path
which ascends FirIe and is known as
the Bostal Way. Once no doubt 1t
was a track on the turf Of the hill
side; now 1t was sunk deep, into a
queer tunnel, which tonight was all
black and white with the cast of it's
own shadows and the CLEAN of the
chalk in the dust" Sussex never
looks better to Daniel than when he
is leaving it. From the back Of
tfrle he looked down on two valleys
full of mist. Already some of the
richness of Spring was in the night,
and he felt some of it mocking him in
his blood" When he is away he is
often homesick for Newhaven
Bridge and the weedy, understanding
mouth Of the Ouse."
Daniel arrives at the Island of Sark
on a May morning when the color
less sky hung low over ST Malo's
sea, and great stiffness and cold
held everything" As he approaches
Guernsey, "a town lay asleep between
fyNrA
was castle, which also seemed
asleep" He crosses to Sark in a
small motor boat apd is again on the
rocky island which he left with his
parents when he was an infant
Could any one live on this desert
place, hard, fierce, scored, and scaly
as the hide of a dragon?" The boat
man remarks that II is a dangerous
coast and Daniel sees "a mass and
terror or rocks, columns. caverns,
points, blocks, walls. crags. gullies
Tevery possible formation. heaping il
SELF round the point, with the water
tapping against it, oozing and plop-
ping IN its crannies with a faint
SLuS -giug, rolling in and out of its
caverns with a follower, booming
sound Peche Agneau is at the
remotest end Of the island. across the
Coupee in Little Sark There. with
not very friendly relatives, who con.
slder him stranger, he passes two
years, the happiest and the saddest of
his life. Then he says good -bve to
the huge, cragged bulk of that love
~ unfrlendly island, which Law now
as When he had first seen il. like n
horned beast asleep upon the sea -
and goes back to the Sussex which he
loves.
The Nobel prize in literature for
1924 was awarded to the Polish novel
lst, Ladislas Reymont. for his novel.
The Peasants" in four parts-"Au-
tumn," Winter" Spring" and sun
mer'-only the first three of which
have as yet been translated The
Peasants is an epic of the soil. like
Sheila Kaye Smiths Sussex Gorse"
and Knut Hansun's Growth of the
SOIL. The life, the aims the
thoughts, the passions of the peasants
are all primitive. The struggle for ex-
istence is so ruthless that few can af-
ford the luxury of ideals. Hot tenn
per, vengefulness. greed and sex pas
sion are the common emotions The
aged who can no longer contribute TO
the family labor are often turned out
to tramp the roads as beggars. Ha-
tired in family life seems more usual
is not romance, but crude passion,
which recognizes few restraints AL
ways, at all seasons, the pursuit of
food, the most acute of primitive
needs, is eager and continuous. La
Dor for all must be inCessant In the
Autumn the crops are stored away
all the grain and live stock that can
be spared are sold and the peasants
prepare for the hard Winter In the
inf orI loiY +a alyx
it last until Spring. Recreations are
few and simple-the Autumn fair.
where they sell their cattle and make
purchases for the Winter: an oCca-
Sional wedding or christening feast
given by a peasant better off than his
neighbors, church festival. drinking
vodka at the tavern. Religion with
the peasants is merely a form, no.
ticed most when it is time to pay the
yearly tithe to the priest. The law is
something to be superstitiousy avoid
ed, because of it's uncertain mysteries
and its certain expense, so it is rarely
invoked by the peasants for personal
injury, though it sometimes is for
property disputes. Thus the old peas
ant Boryna fears neither the law nor
his neighborS when he sets fire to the
hayrick in which his faithless young
wife and her lover have taken refuge
from him. The style of THE Peas
ants" seems exactly suited to the big,
primitive theme. The descriptions
suggest the poetry of nature as con-
trasted with the prose of the peasants
lives. For example,: Autumn was
growing ever more and more au-
tumnal. And every dawn the
morning came more and more slug.
gishly, benumbed, as it were, by the
cold of the hoarfrosts and the sorrow
full stiffness and the life ebbing out
of the land And everv dawn