Sheila Kaye-Smith (1887-1956) Contents: 1. Works 2. Life 3. Connections to Battle Works Although no longer well-known, at her rather untimely death in 1956 aged 68 Sheila Kaye-Smith (left) was a very popular and highly successful novelist who had published no fewer than 31 novels, plus short stories and several works of non- fiction. Her obituary in The Times describes her works as having ‘a quietly challenging veracity’, with a recurring theme of ‘innocence trapped by passion’. Her novels are set in the often thinly disguised towns and countryside of the Sussex Weald and Kent. In Tamarisk Town (1919), for example, Hastings becomes the seaside town of ‘Marlingate’, which has many features recognisably situated in Hastings or St Leonards-on- Sea. The Illustrated London News 13 January 1923 described her as being ‘for some years…..recognised as one of our leading novelists of locality’. In addition to her numerous novels, published almost annually between 1908 and 1956, she wrote a topography of Kent and Sussex, Weald of Kent and Sussex (1953). Her books also include works on other authors, including John Galsworthy, a biography, published in 1916 and, together with her friend G B Stern, two books on Jane Austen: Talking of Jane Austen (1943) and More Talk of Jane Austen (1950), very readable discussions about Austen’s novels. Works of autobiography include: Three Ways Home (1937), Kitchen Fugue (1945) and All the Books of My Life (1956). Two children’s novels The Children’s Summer and Selina is Older are semi-autobiographical, being based on Sheila’s own experience of childhood with her sister Mona and as such give valuable historical insight into the life of a late Victorian middle class child. She also wrote books on a religious theme: Quartet in Heaven (1952) and Saints in Sussex (1926) as well as poems and short stories. Sheila’s early novels were of the type parodied in Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, but as she became increasingly popular her style developed. Her later novels reflect her pre- occupation with Catholicism. All her novels were (and continue to be) of great local interest. She did much to record the local Sussex dialect and accent, now almost lost. An example found in Sussex Gorse is typical: 1 “Oh, I’ve found a way of gitting shut of them rootses – thought of it while I were working at the trees. I’m going to blast ‘em out.” “Blast ‘em!” “Yes. Blast ‘em wud gunpowder. I’ve heard of its being done. I’d never dig all the stuff out myself – yards of it there be – willer rootses always wur hemmed spready.” “Its never bin done in these parts” “Well, it’ll be done now, surelye”. (Sussex Gorse, 1946, p.43) Her novel Joanna Godden (1921) has been identified as her most popular, being made into a film in 1947 starring Googie Withers, while The End of the House of Alard (1923), based on the history of a genuine Winchelsea family, sold most copies. Her non-fiction works show a different side of Sheila – more reflective, revealing her wealth of knowledge and an intelligent, while at the same time very readable, style of writing. Her autobiographies are written in a particularly interesting way. Three Ways Home (1937) takes as its theme three strands of her life – the countryside of Kent and Sussex, her writing and her religious views, culminating together in her conversion to Catholicism. She provides details of her life as well as constructive comments and interesting insights into on her literary works, for example of The Challenge to Sirius (1917) she writes: “It is a long, nervous, chaotic book, aiming at the sky but seldom hitting anything higher than a tree” (Three Ways Home, 1937, p.105) while of the publication of The Tramping Methodist (1908) she reveals that: “The publisher wanted to see me, and an appointment was duly made; but my pleasure and excitement were a little dashed when I found that my parents absolutely refused to let me go to his office unchaperoned.” (Three Ways Home, 1937, p.58) In Kitchen Fugue (1945) Sheila relates how she had to learn to cook in the Second World War, owing to the lack of kitchen staff, using the device to provide further details of her life both in wartime and previously, revealing a world very different from today (and the lives of most people at that time). She tells how she took six cookery lessons at the start of the war to ensure she knew some basic cookery and that: “By the time the Germans were in the Channel Ports I had with my own hands made gnocchi a la romaine, bonne femme soup and sole Normande, cooked spinach and cauliflower, roasted and stuffed a joint. I had snatched these acquirements as it were from under Hitler’s nose and I was exceedingly proud of them” (Kitchen Fugue, 1945 p.45) 2 In All The Books of My Life, published posthumously, Sheila writes about books which she has enjoyed, starting from her childhood favourites such as Black Beauty and Alice in Wonderland, through to the works of Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle and PG Wodehouse as well as those of Freud and Jung. Along the way she presents further autobiographical anecdotes, providing a yet fuller account of her life, including the revelation that she believed in predictive dreams, had an interest in extra-sensory perception and what she terms psychical research – perhaps surprising in a devout Catholic! Life (Emily) Sheila Kaye-Smith was born on 4 February 1887 at 9 Dane Road, St Leonards-on-Sea. She was the eldest of two daughters born to Dr Edward Kaye-Smith and his wife Emily Janet Kaye-Smith, late Maclean, formerly de la Condamine, who had married in 1883. Shaun Cooper notes in The Shining Cord of Sheila Kaye-Smith that the de la Condamines had been French Huguenots who had fled France in 1685, settling in the Channel Islands. Later a branch of Sheila’s immediate ancestors had moved to Edinburgh. Her sister, (Frances) Mona followed Sheila in 1889. For both parents it was their second marriage, Edward Kaye-Smith having married Annie Sophia Jones in Bedford in 1867 and Emily Janet de la Condamine having married Alexander Hamilton Maclean in Edinburgh in 1872. Edward and Annie had one daughter, (Annie) Dulcie born on 31 May 1869. Sadly her birth was swiftly followed by her mother’s death on 13 June. Emily and Alexander had a son, Robert Duncan in 1873, who died in infancy, followed by Bethea (Thea) Hamilton Maclean in 1875. Alexander Maclean died in 1876. Sheila and Mona therefore had two older half-sisters, Dulcie and Thea, while Edward and Emily had a joint family of four daughters. In Three Ways Home Sheila describes how as a young adult she accompanied her father on a visit to a patient, travelling by means of his “pill box” Brougham. They then went on to visit a home near Westfield, where, at Platnix Farm, she and Mona had spent several summers as small children while her mother and father travelled in Europe, visiting places such as Switzerland. She relates that: “There was never a time when I did not know and love the countryside outside Hastings – Platnix and the primrose lane by Ireland Farm, where father used to drive us as tiny children to fill our hands with flowers.” (Three Ways Home, 1937, pp.11-12) Platnix was one of several farms Sheila and her sister were left at while their parents took holidays. The experience is described in The Children’s Summer and Selina is Older, in which Sheila and Mona become Selina and Moira, who also stay at Platnix Farm. Sheila provides a few details about her family history in Three Ways Home. Because her parents had married later in life she had no grandparents alive and probably for this reason knew only a limited amount about her family. She reveals that her father was born in India, 3 the son of an army surgeon, and says that his mother’s brother was Sir John Kaye, whom she asserts wrote A History of the Indian Mutiny plus “one or two novels”. This information is only partially accurate, as is the case so often with recollections of family history. Sir John Kaye did write about the Indian rebellion, but under the title A History of the Sepoy War. This was later combined with a work by Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny, become Kaye and Malleson’s History of the Indian Mutiny 1857-8. Further research into Sheila’s father reveals that he had been born Edward Kaye Smith on 3 October 1839 at Guntur, Madras, son of Edward Smith, surgeon in the Honourable East India Company and Elisa Letitia Smith, formerly Kaye. He had completed his medical training in 1861, becoming a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1861 and a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1862. His obituary states that he had been a pupil of Marischal College, Aberdeen, a fact confirmed by the college’s own records, and a doctor at St George’s, Tooting. Edward Smith Snr. and Eliza Kaye had married in Madras on 24 November 1835. Edward Snr had joined the Honourable East India Company as an Assistant Surgeon in 1830, his records showing that he was the son of George Smith, a merchant, and Jane Farquhar, being born in Aberdeen on 13 December 1806. He died on 29 January 1848 at Wallajabad, India, leaving Eliza with her young family in Scotland.