Kaye

SHEILA KAYE-SMITH (1887 - 1956)

Born in Sussex, Kaye-Smith sets all her novels there, including Starbrace (1909) and Joanna Godden (1921). Hers was the genre of novel satirised by Stella Gibbons in Cold Comfort Farm. Iron and Smoke (1928) however, begins in Eden-in-Cleveland on the edge of 'The Great Smoke itself - Middlesbrough and all the fuming travail of the Tees marshes, a land of everlasting fog.' At this period, the Middlesbrough ironworks were constructing the Tyne and Sydney Harbour bridges.

As Andy Croft has pointed out, this is an opportunity for Kaye-Smith to rehearse some familiar North-South oppositions: new and old; money and land; disruption and tradition, dirt and art, industry and nature. 'The effect is to transform the romantic conventions of the opening courting scene into the abduction of Persephone, the expulsion from Eden':

'As he spoke the moonlight suddenly changed, going up on a sheet of flame. The night turned crimson and for a moment Humphrey felt his heart bound with fear, but next he remembered the blast-furnaces at Carlingrove. This was not the first time that he had seen them belch into the night, wiping out moon and stars, transforming the peaceful fields of Eden-in-Cleveland into some landscape of fire and horror, a frontier-stretch of hell.'

The heroine, Jenny Bastow, returns from long residence in Sussex to see Teesside once again as an outsider. The weather plays its usual part in such narratives. She has come from 'the warm pollen-scented May of the southern fields to the thin cold May of Cleveland, where the buttercups had scarcely begun to bloom.' Things do not improve:

'The long vault of Darlington station was cold and howling with winds, and as the train ran out towards Thornaby and Middlesbrough the grey sky was smeared with scuds of evil-scented smoke. She noticed the stunted trees that could not grow in the sulphur-laden atmosphere, the cottage windows that were grimy with smoke, the cottage gardens that were starved for the smoke-hidden sun.
"Lor!" shrieked her Brighton-born nurse in fear, as an emptying truck sent a stream of molten flame down the side of the great slag heap outside Dinsdale. The falling night seemed full of evil eyes, as flames winked from the mouths of ovens and kilns or flew from the tops of chimneys. The works of Dorman, Long and Co. just outside Middlesbrough were going full blast.'

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
SHEILA KAYE-SMITH (1887 - 1956) Born in Sussex, Kaye-Smith sets all her novels there, including Starbrace (1909) and Joanna Godden (1921). Hers was the genre of novel satirised by Stella Gibbons in Cold Comfort Farm. Iron and Smoke (1928) however, begins in Eden-in-Cleveland on the edge of 'The Great Smoke itself - Middlesbrough and all the fuming travail of the Tees marshes, a land of everlasting fog.' At this period, the Middlesbrough ironworks were constructing the Tyne and Sydney Harbour bridges. As Andy Croft has pointed out, this is an opportunity for Kaye-Smith to rehearse some familiar North-South oppositions: new and old; money and land; disruption and tradition, dirt and art, industry and nature. 'The effect is to transform the romantic conventions of the opening courting scene into the abduction of Persephone, the expulsion from Eden': 'As he spoke the moonlight suddenly changed, going up on a sheet of flame. The night turned crimson and for a moment Humphrey felt his heart bound with fear, but next he remembered the blast-furnaces at Carlingrove. This was not the first time that he had seen them belch into the night, wiping out moon and stars, transforming the peaceful fields of Eden-in-Cleveland into some landscape of fire and horror, a frontier-stretch of hell.' The heroine, Jenny Bastow, returns from long residence in Sussex to see Teesside once again as an outsider. The weather plays its usual part in such narratives. She has come from 'the warm pollen-scented May of the southern fields to the thin cold May of Cleveland, where the buttercups had scarcely begun to bloom.' Things do not improve: 'The long vault of Darlington station was cold and howling with winds, and as the train ran out towards Thornaby and Middlesbrough the grey sky was smeared with scuds of evil-scented smoke. She noticed the stunted trees that could not grow in the sulphur-laden atmosphere, the cottage windows that were grimy with smoke, the cottage gardens that were starved for the smoke-hidden sun. "Lor!" shrieked her Brighton-born nurse in fear, as an emptying truck sent a stream of molten flame down the side of the great slag heap outside Dinsdale. The falling night seemed full of evil eyes, as flames winked from the mouths of ovens and kilns or flew from the tops of chimneys. The works of Dorman, Long and Co. just outside Middlesbrough were going full blast.'
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