Artist v. Factories

SONG ON YOUR BUGLES--Eric Knight-- Harper ($2.50).

In search of the happiest subject, contemporary British novelists seldom look in their own industrial back yard, prefer instead when tired of the front-lawn and front-street side of English life to search in some other part of the world, especially where the climate is warm. As a traveler, Yorkshireman Eric Knight is no exception to the rest. As a writer he bristles with exceptions, the main one being that he has uncovered in a neglected corner of England's industrial back yard--the Yorkshire textile mill country--material for one of the sturdiest novels to cross the Atlantic this year. English critics have compared Song on Your Bugles with the work of a diverse list of writers ranging from Thomas Hardy and George Eliot to A. J. Cronin (The Stars Look Down); readers are mostly right who take such miscellaneous comparisons to mean that the author has achieved more than average originality.

Leading parts in Song on Your Bugles are assigned to a poor boy who has the makings of a great artist and the Yorkshire factories which work for his defeat. Few novelists are ever able to write convincingly about either genius or working-class life. Eric Knight's credible portrayal of both, plus his skillful handling of an idiomatic locale, combine to make his novel outstanding on any grounds; as an example of that rare work, a really dramatic "proletarian" novel, it is more remarkable still.

By the time he was 13, already holding a responsible job in a spinning-mill, towheaded, quick-witted, Yorkshire-stubborn Herrie Champion was well convinced that he was going to be a great painter. Encouraged in this ambition by his widowed mother, Herrie also got an encouraging word from the millowner's wife. The first complication was the millowner's disgust when Herrie joined his fellow-workers on strike. In the starvation-haunted months before the workers were beaten, Herrie reciprocated that disgust, discovered the bitter source of such humor as: "Nay, you don't have to bring no hard times to Skirthorpe. . . . This is the exporting center. . . ." Herrie's part in the strike ended when he was badly injured in a cave-in while stealing coal. Recovered, he joined his blacklisted friend Tawpun as a riveter in a neighboring city's boiler works.

Evenings Herrie attended art classes, soon became a favorite with the instructor, a well-known muralist named Sibley, and his oldest daughter Freda. But it was a long time, what with strikes, accidents, job-hunting and the like, before the factories relaxed their hold to let him devote his full time to painting. Subsidized at last by a rich woman, he went to live with the Sibleys, worked as hard at painting as he had in the factories. His first exhibition was a big success.

Now well on the road to fame, he went home for his first visit in two years, fell in love with the millowner's daughter. When that romance ended miserably he quickly married his old girl Elsa, quit painting, went back to work in the mill, tried hard to live the way he had before. He was not long in finding out his marriage was a mistake. Jealous of his city friends, although Herrie snubbed them, infuriated by his indifference to her shrewish screaming, Elsa burned his pictures, threatened frequently to drown herself in the canal. Bluffing once too often, she came down with labor pains on a deserted bank of the canal, died in childbirth.

Ready now to go back to painting, having also found in Freda the right woman, Herrie missed his first train while trying to persuade the millowner not to close the heavily mortgaged mill for good. The next day he missed his train to celebrate the homecoming of his old pal Tawpun. The day following he missed his train for good. Learning that the mill hands were on their way to burn down the mill rather than see it closed, he headed them off as they were about to set the torch, almost talked them out of it.

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