"Benevolent Marbleheart"*

A Nautical Immigrant Reveals His Critical States of Mind

The Book. What happens aboard a passenger ship when the passengers go ashore? On the vessels to which Engineer-Author McFee was articled, there would be good conversation and perhaps some light drinking in the officers' quarters. If the port were New York, a columnist (Don Marquis?) would come aboard, a fictionist (Christopher Morley?) and one or two more with a taste for books and life. A "doctor" (William McFee) would manipulate the discourse.

The Magic Carpet Business-Discourse runs on the docility and imbecility of traveling Americans.

The Rising Tide of Culture-"They remind me," says the "doctor," "these modern huntresses of culture, of sportsmen who, in their anxiety, get so close to their quarry that they blow it to smithereens with both barrels." Culture is knowledgeable interest, not the emotional deflection that Americans, especially their women, seek. Prosperity has released so many naive intellects "that in no other period in history, and in no other race, has virtue been so curious about her sisters." But, culture being reflected in manners, these naive ones are of good report. "They are developing new resources in human intercourse." The Lady and the Carpet-More of the same mood, wherein globe-trotting female self-expressionists are contrasted with 1) a quiet, acute Circassian, the stay-at-home spouse of a ship's surgeon; 2) a self-made young business woman from Harlem who, gazing on Roman antiquities, simply remarked her preference for things brand new.

Besides such off-duty conversations, this book assembles a number of previously published essays :

Can Poetry Be Taught? doubts the issue, but, with an eye cocked at the vers-libertines, fails to see that the principles of poetic design have been exhausted "any more than the principles of conduct."

Tales of a Great Victorian, Conrad in a New Edition and Rolling Home fortify the reader's impression that the late captain of all seagoing novelists is thoroughly understood by his mate.

Two letters, To a Young Gentleman of Yale University (on writing as a career) and A Reply to a Young Gentleman About Travel have a flavor that is authentically literary as well as intentionally quaint.

The Significance. It is proper and profitable that a nautical, critical immigrant who has written so noteworthy a book as Casuals of the Sea and such commendable books as Captain Macedoinc's Daughter, Aliens and Command, and who now purposes to become a U. S. citizen, anchored for further writing (a sequel to Race) at Westport, Conn., should remind his new countrymen of the texture of his thought. Grimly opposed to "sea stuff," particularly in the magazines of a landlubber nation, he is himself by no means all sailor. His concern is the large "ineluctable problem of human folly," his attitude that of a "benevolent marbleheart," his wit salt, his style compactly patterned, his horizon spacious and contemplative.

The Author. William McFee was born 44 years ago in his father's square- rigged three-master, homeward bound (to England) from India. Sail went out and the boy was trained to engines under a British discipline that he remembered when he trained himself to letters. Between examinations and voyages, he knew Chelsea and the younger, brighter Victorians; later Greenwich Village and the pre-War Americans. What his record was in the vessels of seven seas for 20 years, one may guess. What his record in literature was, is and will be, one may also guess. The late James G. Huneker's estimate, written nine years ago, stands today: "A writer of virile power is a rarity in this hour of insipid embroidery and mucilaginous sentimentalists."

*SWALLOWING THE ANCHOR William McFee --Doubleday, Page ($2.50).