THE New English Dictionary defines the maggot as "a nonsensical on perverse fancy, a crotchet", and Miss Warner employs the word as a titular alias for the sprite who deprived the genteel and clerical Mr. Fortune, prepared to devote his declining years to ministering to the spiritual needs of the inhabitants of an idyllic South Sea Isle, of his religion, his sense of duty, and his peace of mind. Fanua, a tropic island, was apparently a fertile field for an efficient missionary, but in the end Mr. Fortune decided that there are gods and gods, and the importance they play in this world depends as much on their worshippers as on their own entities.
"Mr. Fortune's Maggot" rises like a slender and fragile tower out of the morass of modern fiction. Miss Warner, who was responsible for "Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman," is technically one of the most interesting authors now writing. Like Virginia Woolf, she never wastes a word. Each sentence is placed deftly, accurately; each paragraph is an exquisitely tooled bit. And like another woman writer, Willa Cather, she possesses a refreshing air of calm and quiet. When one reads her it is with a sense that the book is a treat; that it is of a rare vintage, not often obtainable.
Only two characters in this second novel of Miss Warner's assume any importance--Mr. Fortune and his maggot--Lueli. Lueli is a youth who is the literary counterpart of the cinematic "Moana". He is lithe, graceful, ingratiating, childlike--and quite pagan. Worse than any vampire bat, he destroys Mr. Fortune's placidity; he creates have in a heart which had thought itself immune from any emotion except a fervent hatred for the world, the flesh and the devil. His innocence precludes any anger and his simplicity demands friendship. As Mr. Fortune's man Friday he wanders through the book an absolutely unfathomable creature, a gracile dryad, a tropic faun--a maggot. In short, he is a masterpiece.
"Mr. Fortune's Maggot" is a short novel, but it is one of the finest things of the year. It is a happy fact that subtlety plays no part in Bostonian censorship or the book might be suppressed. Certainly it is more blasting to one's faith than the hearty rant of Mr. Lewis against the clergy; for whereas Lewis attacked one clergyman, Miss Warner, with her satire and her fine cutting humor, gives sharp jabs into every ideal for which any clergyman stands, leaving the reader with the furtive feeling that there is something wrong with civilization and that life would be not only simpler but pleasanter on the sun drenched shores of Fanua.
