William McFee

William McFee was born, I believe, on his father’s ship. Most of his life he has spent in ships as a sea-going engineer. He has shown me the engine room of a fruit vessel with as much pride as the script of a new novel. A strong man, and a bluff man, with a seaman’s sense of humor and a book lover’s wisdom, he does not bemoan the vanished days of sailing vessels. His romances are those of the swift modern ships, of merchantman and transport. As an essayist and critic he is almost as well known as for his novels. Now, he has left the sea, bought a cottage at Westport, Connecticut, where he intends living with his mother who has come from England to join him. But the last one hears of him is sailing off with Captain David Bone, author of the “The Brassbounder,” on the “Tuscania”. On that trip one can picture many a chat such as the one described in the following essay. However, when he does settle down in the New England country, he will doubtless dream of the sea, and write his romances. Here is an Englishman who has firmly adopted the ways of America. A quiet, deep-thinking man, William McFee, with a personality that is sturdy, rather than magnetic, dependable rather than fiery.

THE GENTLE ARGONAUTS

The group in the smoke room this morning was a fairly representative microcosm. There were two men making the round trip because it was the slack of the year in their businesses, and Europe was too far, too costly, and too inconvenient. There were a couple of salesmen voyaging with the idea of conquering the West Indies for their houses, an official, with a monocle, proceeding to some distant British possession; and one or two of the ship’s officers, who regarded the glittering beauty of the blue waters with bored and introspective eyes. In a far corner a young gentleman with extremely sleek black hair was writing a letter—he was no doubt a Latin American youth returning disconsolately to his own volcanic country after a hilarious time at an American university. In the palm court abaft the smoke room were reclining a number of dark dazzling creatures, their hands and arms and ears sparkling with massive gems, who were likewise returning to the bosoms of their families after a successful season in New York. And ever and anon there could be seen passing the open windows, as he made his morning promenade, the inevitable elderly and dried up Latin American of immense wealth, one of whom, in grey pants and alpaca coat, seems to be forever drifting to and fro on the waters of the Caribbean.

And in some way now forgotten by all concerned, the talk turned upon books.

“I never read anything,” barked one of the roundtrippers, reaching for a match. “My wife’s crazy about books—house is full of ’em—Ibáñez and Harold Bell Wright, and Shakespeare, and all those fellows. I never read any of ’em.”

There was a delighted silence while he lit his cigar.

The Englishman’s monocle showed a blind white glare as he looked out at the dancing sea.

“Oh, I shouldn’t go as far as that”, he murmured. “It is a great comfort, you know, in certain situations—the reading habit, don’t you think?”

He didn’t look it, but he had spent an anxious year in Mesopotamian prisons and would have gone mad there but for a damaged novelette which he had read so often it had rotted under his hands. He received unexpected support from the other roundtripper.

“You’ve said something,” agreed that gentleman. “I consider reading a very fine thing—a very fine thing indeed. I collect books, gentlemen, first editions of living authors. I have a remarkably fine collection—all signed first editions. I send my bookplate with a letter and the authors send it back signed.”

“What’s the good of that?” demanded his companion suspiciously. “Look at the cost!”

“Autographs,” replied the other tranquilly, “are going up. Some of mine are worth fifty dollars.”

His truculent friend let his jaw drop a little as he stared and digested this novel fact. He was interested in an indolent way. His suspicion, his truculence, his interest, all had a slightly meretricious air. He was on vacation. No doubt his attitude toward life at home was sane and humorous enough. Books were not his métier.

“Oh, no doubt,” the Englishman was saying. “It is very difficult to make a decent choice, once you leave the regular well known men. Even they,” he added, rubbing his nose with the side of his forefinger, “let you down at times.”

One of the salesmen reached behind him on the cushions and fished out a volume. “What would you say about this sort of thing,” he asked, handing it over. “Everybody seems to be reading them now.”

The Englishman accepted it gingerly, his rigid features assuming an expression of extreme concern, as though he felt he had been taken at a disadvantage. As he had. He had forgotten the American Law of Applied Responsibility. By this law, if you reveal an aptitude or a proclivity, you are instantly voted into a position where that aptitude or proclivity can be useful to the community and a source of profit to yourself. This peculiar custom is unknown in England, where a man of talent often spends half his life modestly concealing his ability, and the other half waiting for someone else to die, so that he can get a chance to use it. Realizing, however, that he was one of an imperial race, this particular Englishman braced himself, settled his eyeglass, and after examining the book said he had read it and “found it rather rot, you know.”

“Oh, no!” objected one of the officers, suddenly. “It is a very important book, if you look at it from the right standpoint. Did you read it through?”

“Couldn’t,” replied the Englishman in a small, precise voice. “I got as far as—as far as—well, anyhow, I had to chuck it. Not in my line.”

“Then you can hardly set up as a judge of it,” suggested the other. The Englishman was somewhat nettled.

“Only in so far as I couldn’t stay the whole distance,” he retorted. “That’s criticism in a way I take it. What!”

There was a general laugh and a readjustment of moods as the waiter approached with tall glasses.

“You were saying—” murmured the Englishman after a first libation.

“That a book like this one here, a solidly packed slab of fiction, is a sign of the times. It has no particular features of originality at all. But it has for its theme and milieu the Marquesas or some such island group in the South Seas, and just at present there is a very peculiar craze for the South Seas. Anything at all, so long as it is about the South Seas, may go with the public, and the publishers take the wildest chances. People without any ability to write at all are preparing huge masses of trivial travel talk and illustrating it with photographs of themselves in loin cloths grouped with native women who do not look beautiful even in the prints. Anything at all may make a hit. They, the publishers, think of ‘The Moon and Sixpence,’ forgetting that Somerset Maugham’s genius had a good deal to do with that book. They remember only that in spite of Curwood, Jack London, Ridgwell Cullum, and other specialists of the north, there is a decided set toward the South Seas.”

“How do you account for that?” asked one of the company.

“I can’t account for it, but I have sometimes felt that people were turning toward these distant spots of earth as to a kind of modern Hesperides or Fortunate Islands, where the troubles of life in steamheated apartments, department stores, and crowded subways, for instance, do not exist. The north and the west have been worked to death. The east, Europe and so forth, have gone down in our estimation as paradises. And so, led as usual by the artists, by Gauguin, Stevenson, and Somerset Maugham, we are all busy in the bazaars demanding private magic carpets to take us to the Sunny South Seas, where golden skinned men and delicious girls play papalagis to the wahines. Or is it the wahines which are played to the papalagis? I forget. Nor does it matter. This search for innocent and philosophic harems is bound to fail. Those islands have no existence save for the artists who discover them. If you look around the promenade deck here you will find most of the passengers reading about the distant coral groups of the Southern Pacific, with one or two exceptions who are reading about the coral lips of Ethel Dell’s heroines, or the cattle corrals of Zane Grey’s virile heroes. The author of this particular book, however, has rashly decided to do without photographs of repulsive Polynesian women. The character of his hero, a handsome Englishman in love with a Latin American president’s daughter, is out of date as well as out of drawing. Indeed there is no harm in a picture being out of drawing, as we say, if it carries you with it and conveys an authentic emotion. But to be out of date is the worst of literary crimes. All art is convention, and it is therefore imperative that you use the current convention to reveal the truth. This book reveals nothing save the author’s absurd notions of the ingredients of a romance.”

“A romance is a love story, I take it,” said someone.

“Quite possibly. Nowadays, however, a romance has to take place on an island. Have you ever reflected upon the fascination islands seem to exert upon novelists? Think of the islands of literature—a veritable archipelago! Shakespeare with his ‘Tempest’ was an early victim. Swift invented a floating island. Defoe of course you recall. Modern authors teem with islands. ‘Treasure Island,’ ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau,’ ‘L’Ile des Pingouins,’ ‘The Island Princess,’ ‘Island Nights’ Entertainments,’ ‘The Isle of Unrest,’ ‘An Outcast of the Islands.’ You can even include Kipling’s ‘Islanders’ and Galsworthy’s ‘Island Pharisees’ if you are of a sardonic turn. There is something romantic in the very nature of an island, something finite, enclosed, cut off, remote—the centre of a mysterious hemispherical universe of sea and sky. I admit this because I am under the spell of an island myself. I know an island, not so large, which is very dear to my heart. All day and all night you can hear the immense rumor of the tides of human life washing to and fro in the caverns, almost ‘measureless to man,’ of her rocks. Each day increase the great cliffs of coralline structure fashioned by her millions of tiny inhabitants. The men are not golden skinned, but they have strong hearts and steady brains and are good comrades. As for the women, who would leave them for the doubtful charms of Polynesia? The women of my island are the most beautiful in the world, for they have been garnered from all over the world.”

“Where’s this place!” barked the truculent health seeker. “In the West Indies?”

The other man smiled a little and shook his head.

“Oh no,” he said, signaling to the waiter, “we’ve just left it. I was speaking of Manhattan.”