Maggot

The Story* gets its title from a dictionary definition: "Maggot 2. A nonsensical fancy; a crochet."

Lazy, fantastic Clergyman Fortune leaves St. Fabien parish, whither he has come from a London countinghouse, and journeys to Fanua, an island whose Christian population is even smaller than that of his first missionary situation. At Fanua he succeeds in converting one of the natives, by name, Lueli.

Christened Theodore, this indigent individual becomes Mr. Fortune's shadow, docile and domestic Friday to the clergyman's unstrenuous Crusoe. He idolizes Mr. Fortune in place of the grotesque wooden figure which had previously had that honor. But eventually the demands of Christian religion, slender as they were, grow irksome. Lueli dwindles and repines. He goes to the forest in off moments and bows down in the ancestral fashion to images.

When Mr. Fortune discovers the lapse, he rebukes Lueli, lays hands on aboriginal deity. An earthquake and conflagration ensue. Lueli rescues Mr. Fortune, but the little wooden god becomes a cinder.

Lueli knows that when a man loses his god it is likely that he himself will soon be lost. He grows morose. Mr. Fortune rebuilds the hut, sets things to rights, tries to encourage his acolyte. But he can accomplish nothing. Man and master are spiritually wasting away. The man's duty grows clear. He must restore Lueli's god.

This he does, with a knife and a small stick. Then, having provided at least one of the natives of Fanua with a divinity, he leaves the island. He is sorry to desert his only convert, but hearing Lueli as he babbles happy confidences into the wooden ear of God, Mr. Fortune decides that he has done the wisest thing.

The Significance. Of the many moods subtly fused into this book, the predominant mood is one of satire. Too wise to bear any rancor, too polite to make her rudeness obvious, Author Warner ever so softly annihilates Christian idiocies. Her weapons are neither rapiers nor bludgeons. They are satin sofa-pillows which she tosses laughingly but with accuracy. Breaking when they land, her missiles leave the recipient white and ridiculous with feathers. In prose as easygoing, as smooth and level as a buzzard's flight, she matches her astute intelligence with a fancy as varied as it is engaging.

The Author, when she published her first book, was probably a little surprised by the bounty of critical praise that was heaped upon it. Lolly Willowes, a demurely wicked spinster who became a witch, was not a figure one would have expected to become the heroine of a widely popular novel. Yet she had the distinction of being the first choice of the Book of the Month Club in the U. S. This new novel, as poetic in its wisdom as the first, was lately chosen by the Literary Guild of America. Of Sylvia Townsend Warner herself very little is allowed to be known. She lives "alone in a house, with a big, black dog." She studies Tudor music, Roman ruins, believes in witches.

* MR. FORTUNE'S MAGGOT-- Sylvia Townsend Warner -- Viking Press ($2).