Mr. Fortune

I'm happy to say that my third encounter with Sylvia Townsend Warner's prose has been as happy as those with Kingdoms of Elfin and Lolly Willowes. Once again I was often swept away by the rhythms of the prose and found myself rereading passages - not because I couldn't understand what was happening but because I wanted to figure out how she did it. How Warner was able to build such complex sentences (both grammatically and in content) that flow so smoothly into my conscious that I hardly felt it. I wish I could write so unself-consciously (I know - it's likely Warner spent many long hours crafting the prose but the effect appears effortless). The story of Mr. Fortune's Maggot is similar to Lolly Willowes in that the protagonist is someone who's operated in society, conforming to its expectations, but has never been comfortable in that role. In Timothy Fortune's case, that discomfort is more unconscious than in Lolly's but it's there. When he volunteers to go to the island of Fanua as a missionary and meets the people there, he finds his entire world turned upside down. Where Lolly Willowes' rebellion is played as a comedy, the results of Fortune's is definitely played as tragedy. Timothy Fortune begins life as a bank clerk in England. When his godmother dies and leaves him a modest inheritance, he uses the money to enter the seminary and become a missionary in the South Pacific. After several years working with the main mission in the Raritongan Archipelago, he seizes the opportunity to evangelize the remote island of Fanua, where he'll be the only Westerner. His initial conception of the islanders is embodied in Raritonga's Archdeacon's description of them: "No, no! But they are like children, always singing and dancing, and of course immoral. But all the natives are like that. I believe I have told you that the Raritongan language has no word for chastity or for gratitude?" Arriving on the island, he attempts to interest the Fanuans in Christianity, and though they accept him good-naturedly, they otherwise ignore him. In three years on Fanua, Fortune makes a single convert, or so he believes - Lueli, a young man who attaches himself to Fortune and appears to absorb all of his teachings on Christian faith. And that conversion is unprompted by anything Fortune does. The boy appears while Fortune is celebrating a solitary Mass: "He had waited, but after all not for long. The years in the bank, the years at St. Fabien, they did not seem long now, the time of waiting was gone by, drowsy and half-forgotten like a nightwatch. A cloud in the heavens had been given him as a sign to come to Fanua, but here was a sign much nearer and more wonderful: his first convert, miraculously led to come and kneel beside him a little after the rising of the sun. His, and not his. For while he had thought to bring souls to God, God had been beforehand with His gift, had come before him into the meadow, and gathering the first daisy had given it to him." Thus begi

Makes you question your own foundation and beliefs. Helps you to see that some things are better unloved or left alone.

Gay? Or not gay? Let the reader decide. This very short novel about a Victorian-headed missionary who loses his head in the South Seas is a love story. The lover is the British man, the missionary, who gradually loses his balance. This is almost a spoof of "going native," because in this case, the natives are far more sensible and "civilized" than the missionary. The beloved is a native boy who is clueless of Mr. Fortune's torments, the guilts, and anguish. Forget about looking for "the good parts," if by that you mean the parts where they get it on. That never happens. What does happen is love. Mr. Fortune, against his will, loves Lueli, a young man who loves everything around him as easily as breathing and has no concept of shame. The novel invites us to think about guilt itself, about sexuality in any form, and about love. As Arundhati Roy wrote sixty years later, it is a novel about "the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much." Like all of Townsend-Warner's novels, this one reminds the reader of impermanence. "For no reason he could see he had suddenly become immensely popular. And as he walked to and fro in the twilight waiting for his guests to take themselves off he heard his name being bandied about in tones of the liveliest affection and approval. He had one consolation: by the morrow he would be out of fashion again. As for Lueli, they scarcely mentioned him. If he had drowned they would have spent the evening wailing and lamenting: not for him but for themselves, at the reminder of their own mortality, after the natural way of mourning."