Evening star., 1937-01-09

carefully dSSeUlOIcQ aIlfs QOCuTnenJeQ
He wrote it in passion. and he wrote
it in rush. But it is an exciting
and extremely valuable document
nevertheless. giving the best picture
now available Of what is going on ir
Spain especially Catalonia-and full
of things to make the newspaper
reader weigh the headlines more care
fully than heretofore.
ROSE DEEPROSE.
By Sheila Kaye.Smith
Nem York: HARPER ana
Brothers.
Reviewed by
LOUISE TOWNSEND NICHOLL.
LEW novelists who write 20 or more
novels grow richer, deeper and
more diverse as they 60 on. But this
is. at a rough estimate, Sheila Kaye
Smiths twenty-fifth book. and it L
one of the best If not the best. The
diversity isn't in locale-Kent isn't
far from Sussex-nor in general sub.
ject, for Rose Deeprose is a country
woman like the rest; but in scope Of
circumstances determined by few in
tricately related people. in compre-
hension of the tragic casual sequence
which can be compassed in one ordi-
nary life. Were it not for the one flaw
of Townley's suicide. the book would
be a logically perfect emotional or
ganism. 1t is the only case where the
author let a character run away with
her; she took him at his bewildered
and embittered word. and didn't wait
for his second thought. Townley en-
joyed self-pity, he would have liked
the idea Of killing himself, but he
would never have done it.
But it is not for the logic of its
emotion that the book will be re-
membered, but by the emotion itself
which the reader is mercilessly made
to share. Don't think for moment
that you can read this lightly and get
off scot-free Don't say, well, after
all, she isn't Hardy" 1t isn't lack of
suffering that distinguishes this book
from classic tragedy-it is rather that
Sheila Kaye-Smith sees something
more in tragedy than blind mischance
and cosmic laughter. She apprehends
not only damnation, but salvation,
hope, an ultimate resolving. Your
suffering will not be in vain.
Everybody's life is House that Jack
Built, though not everybody realizes it
as Rose did. Rose wasn't intellectual,
but she was clear-sighted. She knew
where all the trouble lay-in that first
failure, failure to love her father, be-
trayal of her mothers trust in her.
If she had loved her father, he
wouldn't have married Christian
Roses best friend, and Rose herself
wouldn't have rushed out of the
triangle and married her own cousin.
There is another nursery rhyme which
says it, too: each line Of which begins
with For the want Of :. For the
want of a shoe, the horse was lost" ]"
Not loving her father seemed as small
a thing as horseshoe at first, but
though small, bring good
luck. To make up for each relation
ship which failed she tried to make
the next one successful But be-
cause of that early cleavage, "the
house of her heart must always be
divided" until for one love she gave
up everything and suddenly private
tragedy became public and the law
stepped in.
nEEP in the story is the schism be-
tween men and women. Women
must be chivalrous to men, her mother
taught her, because men have the
hardest time of it. ITO my mind" /"
said the mother, there's no doubt
that woman has more sense than
a man. He's got more feeling. but
she's got more sense, so she must be
kind to him and not hurt his feelings" J"
This Rose never forgot. But oh, the
relief of being sometimes just with
q woman.
The theme is so compound that any
one situation is story in itself-a girl
who indirectly causes her mothers
death by trying to avert it; a girl
whose best friend becomes her STEP
mother; . girl who marries her cousin
and has Q natural" child; a girl who Is
charged with numbering the one per-
son she Is trying to protect; a girl they
call hard" who is really racked with
pity, that dreadful pity which she
feared more than pain" And all these
girls are Rose Deeprose. twice Deep
rose for marrying her kin, tied to the
two Deeprose farms of Harlakenden
and Bladbean and caught into the re-
lentless square Of her father, husband.
friend and herself all of them
planted in the Kentish soil like
clothes poles bound together with
knotted cords, or four trees whose
roots are tangled underground. No
body would believe how many combi-
nations and permutations could be
made Of those four folk.