Mr. Fortune

by Sylvia Townsend Warner, Adam Mars-Jones (Introduction)

After a decade in one South Seas mission, a London bank-clerk-turned-minister sets his heart on serving a remote volcanic island. Fanua contains neither cannibals nor Christians, but its citizens, his superior warns, are like children—immoral children. Still, Mr. Timothy Fortune lights out for Fanua. Yet after three years, he has made only one convert, and his devotion to the boy may prove more sensual than sacred. Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, Sylvia Townsend Warner’s follow-up to Lolly Willowes, is lyrical, droll, and deeply affecting, and her missionary captivated his creator as much as he did her readers.

Long after the work’s publication, Warner began the novella The Salutation. Now adrift and starving on the Brazilian pampas, Mr. Fortune is rescued by an elderly widow, who delights in having an Englishman about the house. Her heir, however, may beg to differ.

Brilliant and subversive, Mr. Fortune’s Maggot and its sequel are now available in one volume. They show Sylvia Townsend Warner at the height of her powers.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, British Literature, Literature, Literary Fiction, Religion, LGBT

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1932

About the author

Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora (Nora) Hudleston. Her father was a house-master at Harrow School and was, for many years, associated with the prestigious Harrow History Prize which was renamed the Townsend Warner History Prize in his honor, after his death in 1916. As a child, Sylvia seemingly enjoyed an idyllic childhood in rural Devonshire, but was strongly affected by her father's death.

She moved to London and worked in a munitions factory at the outbreak of World War I. She was friendly with a number of the "Bright Young Things" of the 1920s. Her first major success was the novel Lolly Willowes. In 1923 Warner met T. F. Powys whose writing influenced her own and whose work she in turn encouraged. It was at T.F. Powys' house in 1930 that Warner first met Valentine Ackland, a young poet. The two women fell in love and settled at Frome Vauchurch in Dorset. Alarmed by the growing threat of fascism, they were active in the Communist Party of Great Britain, and visited Spain on behalf of the Red Cross during the Civil War. They lived together from 1930 until Ackland's death in 1969. Warner's political engagement continued for the rest of her life, even after her disillusionment with communism. She died on 1 May 1978.

Reviews

[Antoinette · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a total slog to this reader. If not for a course I am taking, I would have DNF’d for sure by page 40. That’s when I knew I would need to fight to continue this book.

From a perfect first sentence;” Though the Reverend Timothy Fortune had spent three years in the island of Fanua he had made but one convert.” What happened to what I thought would be an excellent book?

Mr. Fortune has come to the island of Fanua to convert the people to Christianity. He is a Protestant minister. The people of the island are kind and fun loving- they do not take life seriously. They prefer their own idols to his religion. Mr. Fortune takes under his wing a young boy called Lueli. He thinks he will be his success story only to find out that Lueli still has his idol and is only placating him by going along.

All of the story is from Mr Fortune- his words, his thoughts, his daily outings. Totally, inescapably boring!!!

I have heard that her book Lolly Willowes is excellent. If you have read it, please let me know if I should attempt it.

Published: 1927

[Alwynne]

I love Sylvia Townsend Warner's writing and this 1927 novel is laced with examples of her wonderfully waspish wit, as well as some striking, descriptive passages. But I found her story too difficult to negotiate, it's just so completely out of step with the contemporary world - at least my corner of it. It centres on Timothy Fortune, a bored, bank clerk from North London. A small inheritance allows him to abandon his dreary existence, and travel abroad to retrain as a minister for missionary work. But he becomes obsessed with collecting the souls represented by the inhabitants of a small, isolated island Fanua - despite his superiors' vocal misgivings. The only outsider, and the only white man on the island, Mr Fortune's surprisingly warmly welcomed but increasingly dispirited by the islanders' preference for their own gods over his. His only apparent convert is a young boy Lueli. Mr Fortune provides Lueli with a name he deems more suitable for a Christian and sets out to instruct him in his faith. But Mr Fortune's growing fixation on Lueli soon becomes a problem, as does Lueli's continued attachment to his "heathen" beliefs.

It's obvious Townsend Warner intended to challenge aspects of the racism of her era, she even inserts a direct reference to "colour prejudice." Her depiction of missionary work is also less than flattering. But I found Mr Fortune's obsession with the "naked, brown" Lueli - and the framing of the islanders as smiling, "child-like" innocents - increasingly hard to stomach. Townsend Warner also depicted the hapless Mr Fortune in ways that linked his identity to the contemporary equivalent of "queer" which was fairly provocative for the time. However, the power dynamic between the much older, white man and the young islander made it hard, bordering on impossible, for me to sympathise with Mr Fortune's circumstances or with his struggles with forbidden desire. Townsend Warner later wrote a sequel of sorts The Salutation apparently bothered by how she'd left Mr Fortune at the end of her earlier novel - I can't comment on whether or not it's worth reading because I didn't get that far.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

with us, who are old, it is small blame to feel such impulses, and no merit to overcome them. The heart is like an old dog. It barks, and lies down again....

This book is the novella Mr. Fortune's Maggot and a sequel written five years later, The Salutation. It was thoughtful of nyrb-classics to combine them here because when you finish the first story you are not quite done with Timothy Fortune. Townsend Warner felt the same, ending the first story with an 'Envoy': My poor Timothy, good-bye! I do not know what will become of you.

I was skeptical at the start. Fortune quit his job as a bank clerk and turned missionary, volunteering to convert the natives of Fauna. He is not a success and appears instead to be after a single soul, a lovely boy named Lueli. They stop short of actual pedophilia. I think. There is an earthquake; a volcano comes to life. And so does Fortune, who finally looks, and sees.

Enough of that plot. What I loved were the thoughts, the phrasings, that made me smile or stare and ask, "Is that true?"

Such as:

The great-grandmother was especially good company. She was a celebrated story-teller, and when she had exhausted her stock of scandals about every one in the village she fell back upon legends and fairy-tales. Mr. Fortune was interested to find that many of these were almost word for word the stories of the Old Testament.

And:

Forever is a word that stretches backward too. So, you know, be good.

The second story is set in Brazil. It starts with a cough. Cough.

Angustias (anguish) is a widow, formerly married to an Englishman. She recognizes the cough. Only Englishmen cough like that. And so she meets Mr. Fortune.

...never having been acquainted with women, he found her solicitude no obstacle to continuing to do as he wished.

Which brings us back to the wonderful passage which opens this review. Recommended for old dogs.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first exposure to Warner, who I sort of knew in passing and by reputation only as someone, while not regarded as unmissable, seems to simmer just below the surface of 20th century fiction, a kind of lesbian Paul Bowles, maybe.
I've come across similar authors lately who are best described as "simmering" and what I mean by that is their style is quiet, nothing showy or flashy, but with a very soft and silent intensity, a quietly riotous way of trying to explain the human vaunt and venture. Warner approaches it from the angles of solitude and religion. And love, for the first story, at least, is very much a love story between an older priest and a young and unswerving Pacific islander.
The second novel (This is actually two novels, "Mr. Fortune's Maggot" and "The Salutation" included in one volume) is a love story in the sense of picking up the pieces afterward, though no one is to blame and perhaps that is the main theme here, the guiltlessness of being human.

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 - see reviews: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97... and http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/93..., respectively. 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 begins an odd friendship that grows but is plagued with incomprehension on both sides.

Incomprehension that takes a tragic turn when Fortune discovers that Lueli has kept his personal god and continues to make offerings to it. (The Fanuans each have a totem that they worship – in a sense, they already worship “one god,” it happens to be a god unique to each islander. I don’t know if such a cult exists in the South Pacific or whether Warner invented it as part of the novel.) While Fortune confronts Lueli and demands that he destroy the idol, the island’s volcano erupts. In the ensuing earthquakes and conflagrations, Lueli’s god is physically destroyed but Fortune’s “superior” God is also lost. Searching for a way to assuage Lueli’s grief that respects him, the missionary realizes:

“Yes, that’s the sort of thing to say, but he felt a deep reluctance to saying it. It seemed ungentlemanly to have such a superior invulnerable God, part of that European conspiracy which opposes gun-boats to canoes and rifles to bows and arrows, which showers death from the mountains upon Indian villages, which rounds up the Negro in an empire and tricks him of his patrimony….

“Still he looked about him. But he was not looking for anything now nor did he need to raise his eyes to heaven or close them before any presence unseen. The God who had walked with him upon the island had gone. He had ascended in the flames that had burst roaring and devouring from the mountain-top, and hiding His departure in clouds of smoke, He had gone up and was lost in space.

"Mr. Fortune no longer believed in a God.”

The realization is not a happy one for Fortune but it does free him to recreate Lueli’s god and restore his desire to live (Lueli attempts suicide at one point), and it leads to the second profound realization in the novel – the nature of Fortune’s love for his “protégé”:

“I’d had a poor meager turnpike sort of life until I came here and found Lueli. I loved him, he was a refreshment to me, my only pleasant surprise. He was perfect because he was a surprise. I had done nothing to win him, he was entirely gratuitous. I had had no hand in him, I could no more have imagined him before-hand than I could have imagined a new kind of flower. So what did I do? I started interfering. I made him a Christian, or thought I did, I taught him to do this and not to do the other, I checked him, I fidgeted over him. And because I loved him so for what he was I could not spend a day without trying to alter him. How dreadful it is that because of our wills we can never love anything without messing it about! We couldn’t even love a tree, not a stone even; for sooner or later we should be pruning the tree or chipping a bit off the stone. Yet if it were not for a will I suppose we should cease to exist. Anyhow it is in us and while we live we cannot escape from it; so however we love and whatever we love it can only be for a few minutes, and to buy off our will for those few minutes we have to relinquish to it for the rest of our lives whatever it is we love. Lueli has been the price of Lueli. I enslaved him. I kept him on a string. I robbed him of his god twice over – first in intention, then in fact. I made his misery more miserable by my perpetual interference. Up until an hour ago I was actually tormenting him with that damned geometry. And now he is dead…Yes, parrot! You may well whistle. But be careful. Don’t attract my attention too much lest I should make a pet of you, and put you in a cage, and then in the end, when you had learnt to talk like me instead of whistling like a wise bird, wring your neck because you couldn’t learn to repeat Paradise Lost."

The novel ends with Fortune leaving Fanua in order to save the Lueli he loves (though there’s a bleak admission that Lueli and all his people are an “endangered species” with the continued advance of the modern world into their lives – Fortune’s sacrifice will come to naught eventually). And as the missionary returns to civilization, Warner expresses her own fears for the man: “My poor Timothy. Good-bye! I do not know what will become of you.”

[lethe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr. Fortune's Maggot (finished 20 July 2019)
This was the first novel by STW I ever read, and upon rereading it is still my least favourite. That said, I did enjoy it, more than I did the first time.

Timothy Fortune is an English missionary who optimistically sets off for Fanua, a small South Seas island where he hopes to convert the natives to Christianity. But he only manages to make one convert (or so he thinks), Lueli, a boy thirty years his junior, whom he grows to love very much.

A few things happen that make Mr. Fortune lose his religion, and he finally comes to realize that the Fanuans are perfect as they are, they don't need converting. As there is no point in him staying any longer, he decides to leave.

It is a rather melancholy story, and as always, STW's writing is beautiful.

The Salutation is a kind of sequel to Mr. Fortune's Maggot, but can be read independently.

Years later, Mr. Fortune has come to South America to die. Suffering from sunstroke, he is taken in by an elderly widow in her house in southern Argentina, who nurses him back to health.

Apart from the beautiful paragraph quoted below, I did not really care for this story. Mr. Fortune's Maggot's ending is fine as it is, this felt superfluous to me.

Quote from The Salutation:

It is only for a week or two that a broken chair or a door off its hinges is recognised for such. Soon, imperceptibly, it changes its character, and becomes the chair which is always left in the corner, the door which does not shut. A pin, fastening a torn valance, rusts itself into the texture of the stuff, is irremovable; the cracked dessert plate and the stewpan with a hole in it, set aside until the man who rivets and solders should chance to come that way, become part of the dresser, are taken down and dusted and put back; and when the man arrives no one remembers them as things in need of repair. Five large keys rest inside the best soup-tureen, scrupulously preserved though no one knows what it was they once opened; and the pastry-cutter is there too, little missed, for the teacup without a handle has taken its place. For a few days the current of household life checks at obstacles such as these, but soon it hollows itself another channel, and flows round them unperturbed. (p. 165-166)

In his Introduction, Adam Mars-Jones makes a lovely comparison with Virginia Woolf:

[STW] emancipated herself from provincialism at least as fully as Woolf, but without anything like the same struggle, the same effort of the will. She had the knack of melting across barriers, rather than defining herself against them. (p. ix)

[Oana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little perplexed as to what rating to give to this book; I had no intention of reading it, it came in a dual volume with Lolly Willowes, which I wanted to read after hearing about it in Singled Out. I knew Mr. Fortune's Maggot was about a missionary and that Warner wrote about a foreign culture she didn't really know - I didn't really care for a 1920s opinion of Polynesian culture or an outdated travelogue. Looking at the reviews on Good Reads and seeing so many four and five stars, I decided to give it a try after all.

A happy surprise followed: this quiet novel is more universal than I expected. There are only about five instances of any real action. The novel is about friendships and the failure of individuals to appreciate or nurture these friendships. Timothy Fortune approaches his proselytizing with zeal, bulldozing through his sole convert Lueli's attempts at a more human connection. Even when Mr. Fortune loses his faith, he turns with equal pedantry to math (with near tragic results).

Mr. Fortune's life has been event-less, his new companion brought something unexpected:

"'I'd had a poor meagre turnpike sort of life until I came here and found Lueli. I loved him, he was a refreshment to me, my only pleasant surprise. He was perfect because he was a surprise. I had done nothing to win him, I could no more have imagined him before-hand than I could have imagined a new kind of flower.'" (p. 276, 1966 ed.)

Unfortunately, Mr. Fortune's tragic flaw is his lack of rigidness:

"'Why can't I be natural?...Why can't I say how glad I feel? And why don't I feel my gladness?'" (page 278)

Mr. Fortune imagined that he would be buried on the island; by the end of the novel, he leaves with no plan as to how to live out the rest of his life. His self-exile is the tragedy. I wished he could stay on this paradisaical island, but as Mr. Fortune says:

"He must go away, that was the only strategem by which love could outwitits own inherent treachery. If he stayed on, flattering himself with the belief that he had learnt his lesson, he would remember for a while no doubt; but sooner or later, inevitably he would yield to his will again, he would begin to meddle, he would seek to destroy." (page 280)

The more I think about this novel, the more I get from its lessons. I may change my star rating in the future and I may even re-read it one day. (Heck I feel bad for giving this three stars when I gave Freakonomics four. I may have to revisit that latter decision.)

Here's who the novel is for:

- People who like finely crafted sentences (i.e. the "Victorian" way of writing).

- People who don't mind quiet novels that analyze behaviour and thought.

It's not an easy read and definitely not for everyone. For the right people, I felt compelled to write a review to get this little known novel a bit more recognition. Hopefully in the future someone else can write a better review than mine.

[Anne]

As has been previously established, I adore Sylvia Townsend Warner and would happily read anything she wrote. In Mr. Fortune's Maggot, she did not disappoint, and her prose was as delightful, moving, and subtle as ever. I adored The Salutation a bit less and tend to agree that it tarnishes the purity of MFM somewhat, but hey-ho.

I will say that my heartfelt enthusiasm for this book was dampened somewhat by Townsend Warner's willingness to invent/co-opt an indigenous culture and peoples to act as a foil to her British main character and British foibles/hypocrisies in general. Granted, I think it's fair to ascribe this willingness to both STW's time and her desire to satirize (rather than lionize) said foibles and their ridiculousness (a la The Mikado), but it's still not the best look, and let's just all agree not to do it again.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writers should leave well enough alone. Mr. Fortune's Maggot is an excellent, gently written story of a missionary, living in paradise, who can't quite handle it. It's delicate, funny, and sad. And totally different from The Salutation, the long-after follow-up story which concludes Mr. Fortune's story in a much artier, more congested, less satisfying way. It drags the first story down enough to make me not appreciate it as much. So 2 stars plus 5 stars equals three. Can I unread the second story?

[William Leight · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Mr. Fortune’s Maggot” is a quite strange book, starting with the title, which uses a definition of “maggot”, that of “a whimsical or perverse fancy”, that was old-fashioned and unfamiliar even in the early '30s when the book was written (at least, I assume that’s why Warner defines it for you on the page immediately after the title page). Warner’s novels usually focus on women, but “Mr. Fortune’s Maggot” is, naturally, about Mr. Fortune, a man who, after a long, blameless, and boring career as a bank clerk, decides that he wants to go to the South Seas to become a missionary. He ends up as practically the first white man on the island of Fanua, a tropical paradise to end all tropical paradises — plentiful food, perfect weather, kind and friendly natives, nobody wears any clothes, etc. — and though he doesn’t make great strides as a missionary — he has only a single convert, a teenage boy named Lueli — he seems to be getting on ok. The first half of the book is largely humorous, showing up the contrast between Mr. Fortune, who, though humble and kind, is very much a prim and proper Englishman, and is serious about his missionary purpose even if he instinctively recoils from what you might call hardball tactics, and the islanders, who are almost a caricature of pagan freedom. (There’s a very funny page solely devoted to Mr. Fortune’s inability to deal with the way that he is teased by the young women of the island, who are completely unfamiliar with primness and propriety.) Mr. Fortune’s earnest but hapless attempts to convert the islanders are also amusing, as are his attempts to turn Lueli into a real English boy, with a Christian name (Theodore), clothes, etc. And then the story takes a sudden turn. Mr. Fortune discovers, by accident, that Lueli has never ceased worshiping the idol that represents his personal god (all the people of Fanua have one), and hence is in fact no convert at all; on the same night this earthquake in Mr. Fortune’s understanding of his place in Fanua is mirrored by a real earthquake. Mr. Fortune’s hut burns down (it’s made of wood and straw, and he has an oil lamp), and Lueli rescues him. But there is a cost, as both have lost their gods: Mr. Fortune no longer believes in the Christian God, and Lueli’s idol was burned in the fire. The loss of his god sends Lueli into an ever-deepening depression, but Mr. Fortune no longer has any idea of trying to take advantage of this opportunity by turning Lueli into a true Christian. Instead, in the second half of the book he attempts, with minimal success, to combat Lueli’s apathy and listlessness with the intellectual fruits of Western civilization, culminating in a series of geometry lessons given in the hope that the abstract beauty of pure mathematics will provide an acceptable replacement for the lost idol. But when this attempt fails, and Lueli is only barely rescued after a suicide attempt, Mr. Fortune comes to the conclusion that he is doing more harm than good, and his only recourse is to leave Fanua forever, even though there is nothing for him outside it.

Although Warner’s introduction gives no indication that such was her intention, the obvious way to read “Mr. Fortune’s Maggot” is as an anti-colonial parable. (She was an active member of the Communist Party, so this is not entirely implausible.) Mr. Fortune is far better-intentioned than the actual colonizers were, but his attempts to beguile Lueli with first Christianity and then science allow him to cover a considerable chunk of Western colonial impact on the rest of the world (without, to be sure, any of the exploitation that accompanied it), and his final conclusion that the best thing he can do is leave the Fanuans, and Lueli, as he found them — he even carves a new idol for Lueli to worship — is a clear rebuke to the actions of, say, the actual British Empire. So is his bitter reflection upon leaving that though he was one of the first white people on Fanua, he will certainly not be the last: to underline the deeply questionable nature of the advantages he was hoping to bring to Fanua, he emerges from the island to the news of the start of World War I. Such parables have a tendency to be mechanistic, and indeed the islanders mostly don’t really register as characters: their idyllic existence owes very little to that of the actual inhabitants of South Pacific islands (in the introduction, Warner explains that she did practically no research, relying almost solely on her memory of a memoir by a missionary on a Pacific island) and is instead mainly intended to provide a foil, and a retort, to Mr. Fortune’s efforts at Christianization and Westernization. Mr. Fortune, however, is a very real character. His affection for Lueli (Warner hints briefly at a homosexual component to this but then never returns to it, though perhaps we are simply meant to take the hint from that one reference: the book was written in the ‘30s, after all), his humility and self-doubt, and his love for Fanua, desire to do the best he can by it, and pain when he realizes that said best means leaving it behind forever, are all very real. Mr. Fortune is a strange person who has led, in some ways, a very sad life, but he and his life are recognizable and real in a way that Lueli et al. are not, and it’s this, and Warner’s sense of humor, that gives the book a depth and interest that it might otherwise have lacked.

In my edition, the book is followed by another Mr. Fortune story, “The Salutation”. Warner talks in the introduction to the book about her real affection for the character, and it is presumably this affection that brought her to write about him again, but the story itself, a far more somber tale than the novel, doesn’t really hang together. Mr. Fortune, now entirely without a reason for existence, has been wandering the world since his departure from Fanua, working odd jobs on ships. A glimpse of the Andes for some reason seizes him with a compulsion to travel inland without also giving him the means to afford it, and we find him in the process of quietly dying, feverish and starving, in a small Argentinian town. As luck would have it, though, he collapses outside an estate owned by an elderly Argentinian woman who is not only kind and generous but also an Anglophile: her husband, dead for many years, was English, and she still nourishes a fondness for British expatriates, one that she is happy to lavish on the only such person to come through her town in quite some time. Though she is beatifically certain that he can remain with her as long as he wants (though with no suggestion of a sexual relationship, of course, since Mr. Fortune is, after all, gay), Mr. Fortune is less sure where he fits, not only on the estate but in Argentina and indeed life. His uncertainty is reinforced when the heir to the estate, a teenage grandson who has apparently not inherited his grandmother’s attitude towards the English, shows up for a visit (alerted by the improvement in the estate’s accounts since Mr. Fortune started doing them) determined to expel the freeloading foreigner who is compromising his grandmother’s honor: his grandmother, however, is placidly but invincibly certain that in this matter she has the final say. The resulting tension is interesting, but never really resolved: instead, Warner finishes the story with what is revealed to be a dream sequence, a cop-out that, I think, makes it clear that she never really had a vision for it in the first place.

[Michael Ritchie · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3-1/2 stars) Subtle satire of a clergyman who goes as a missionary to as South Seas island and winds up falling in love with a native boy, even if he can't quite admit it to himself. Stylish writing, some drily amusing moments, and overall rather sad if not quite tragic. The "sequel" story included in this volume might have been bearable at half its lengthy, but as it is, it's very disappointing and is certainly not necessary to knowing the character of Mr. Fortune.

[Ava Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ only because it started to get repetitive

[Nicholas During · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a weird and wonderful book. Lot's to ponder on this one, both the colonial mentality of the western world, and impossible (most likely homosexual) love. And what a strange character is Mr. Fortune; incredibly dim-witted, somewhat likable, and very, very naive, he's transformation from Christian missionary to Pacific Island-loving layabout is only half the story. In fact the "lose of God" didn't move me much, it was the realization that he was in love with Lueli, he's only convert, and the inherently destructive nature of his love that makes the book so great. While this is no doubt meant to be a metaphor for the "well-intentioned" colonial rule--though Fortune realizes his mistake pretty quickly and converts himself--it does seem, to me at least, that homosexuality is here the driving the force of both the love, the hurt, and the ultimate abandonment of the island. Poor Mr. Fortune!

I would have given the book 5 stars but I wasn't as thrilled about 'Salutation'--this edition is 'Mr. Fortune's Maggot' published in 1927, and the follow up 'Salutation' about Timothy Fortune years late. It didn't have the same power or complexity, or funniness. But the ending was creative and I wasn't expecting it. And the majority of the book is great. Well worth a read if you are into post-colonial lit from the the repentant western eyes, or early gay lit from a somewhat self-censored eyes, or just plain, good English early 20th century writing. A lot of Warner's contemporaries are still very famous, and she deserves to be so too.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an NPR recommended book and not widely available (I had to go to the UA library). Easy to read, a bit simplistic and tedious at times. The book was a predictable commentary, once again, on the folly of Christian missionary and attitude toward other cultures. It may have been intended to be a commentary on the weakness of man, but I interpret it as the weakness of religion imposing unnatural expectations on man.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story is very sweet but I didn't like the second one at all

[Julie Stielstra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as wonderful as Lolly Willowes, but that's a high bar. But it's another beautiful example of what Warner is so great at: ordinary, overlooked, well-intentioned people - spinsters, clerks - who get their shot at breaking out of the trap they have been in most of their lives. Late in life, Timothy Fortune feels a call to take up a missionary's work in a remote south seas island. He is gentle, kind-hearted, and always means well. So are the indigenous inhabitants of the island - who welcome him, and mostly cheerfully and politely ignore him. One adolescent boy, Lueli, is curious about the stranger, hangs around him, becomes fond of him, and Fortune thinks he has a convert. But who has converted whom? For Lueli, in his innocence and pliability, stirs a certain passion in Fortune. And yet... Lueli cannot quite be possessed, and cannot be persuaded away from his deep and lifelong beliefs, to a nearly tragic extent. Fortune must come to grips with his own values, and those of the people he has tried to entice away from theirs, and comes away desolate, yet freed... sort of. In the sequel, The Salutation, we catch up with Fortune as he literally drifts across the planet, taking odd jobs on ships, wandering up and down North and South America. In Maggot, we have Fortune among others, on the fringes of a community. In Salutation, he is mostly alone, crossing huge expanses of harsh, empty country, finally settling in an eccentric boarding house. He confronts his solitude, tiring of dragging a heavy garment of grief that he has not been able to put on and learn to wear. It is searingly, gorgeously sad.

With another pitch-perfect cover by one of Prinzhorn's "insane" artists, murdered by the Nazis.

[Graychin · Rating 3 out of 5]

First things first, Sylvia Townsend Warner helps us with the title. By way of an epigraph, she supplies the archaic definition: “MAGGOT. 2. A whimsical or perverse fancy, a crotchet.” The “perverse fancy” intended in this case is, I think, the Christian notion of God, or at least the idea that Mr. Fortune – former London bank clerk turned missionary in the South Seas – knows anything worth teaching the natives about Him.

It's not exactly a theme I’m bound to appreciate, and there’s not a lot of action in the plot, save one eventful night. Did Townsend Warner intend Mr Fortune’s Maggot as a serious indictment of Christianity? As a critique of colonialism? As a record of repressed homosexuality? I don’t know. Maybe. It’s hard for me to take any of these readings seriously. I simply consider it a good story (but not a life changer) told in above-average prose. I’ll hunt for a copy of Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes next, I think.

3.5 stars

[Margaux Tatin Blanc]

It is a satire and very well written by a fantastic writer often ignored by the pundits of literature history...
Sylvia Townsend Warner writes wonderfully about isolated characters who found their way or solace through very modern and original ways... becoming one with the devil in Lolly Willowes (1926) or joining a French revolution in the 19th century in another novel, and becoming one with oneself here by moving to a polynesian paradise "a la Gauguin" but as a British religious man... Like Gauguin he had started in a bank and then found his way... The ressemblance stops there!

[Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I start thinking about Sylvia Townsend Warner, my thoughts begin to turn into a kind of panegyric of literature and its graces. I will spare my fellow goodreaders the product of that tendency, and simply say:

Mr. Fortune’s Maggot was devastatingly beautiful. If I, like the poor Mr. Fortune himself, couldn’t really be present during the Salutation, it was not because it was poorly wrought, but only because my mind was still lingering over the episodes of that blissful and tragic time on the nonexistent island somewhere in the midst of the Pacific Ocean.

[Alex Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

i’m pretty bored of reading about colonialism. this one was good in the way that it wasn’t really about colonialism because mr fortune is a blithering idiot. this book has some groomy vibes i don’t like at all. which is why it’s dropped a star. also just so fucking boring like so boring and not interestingly written sorry warner all love girl

[Molly]

This is a curious book, written in an old fashioned style, and I read it because it was in a list of books to read, and because it was about a missionary. I'm not sure it's worth your time, but I thought it was interesting because it was so different. Now and then you have to read something strange.

[warm breeze · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love STW, but attitudes of the time made it hard to get into this. I'm sure the colonisation plot was meant to be subversive, but all the "noble savage" characters didn't feel great as a modern reader. It’s strange that it made me this uncomfortable because I loved Black Narcissus. I might give it another go after I’ve read the rest of her stuff.

[Mumzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite of 2017.

[Daniel Polansky]

I read this book.

[Foxed Folios · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5* for some beautiful passages/observations, and humour (didn’t make me laugh, but it is clearly well done).

[D. Stark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bittersweet chords of a Deity laughing at careworn mortals.

[Kookie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.0 ⭐️

Wtf was he thinking ???????
And ofc he was a missionary

[Edith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A middle-aged missionary on a paradisiacal tropical island who eventually finds out what love is all about is the protagonist of this novel. It's not a usual love story, though, and Mr. Fortune isn't a missionary of the usual kind! In fact, the book satirises a view of the world that is marked by arrogance and narrow-mindedness that results not only in a lack of understanding for other cultures and religions, but also makes some people want to evangelise them. It talks of an innocence and happiness that don't necessarily match our ideas. And it talks of true love that focuses on seeing the loved one happy and nothing else. In this case, it's a latent homosexual love of an aging man to a boy. Overall, it's a funny and yet wonderfully thought-provoking read.

If you want to know more, be invited to click here to read my review on my book blog Edith's Miscellany !

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful, a beautiful book. Sylvia Townsend Warner describes the natural world and its creatures with a painter's eye. Her characters are alive; they are flawed, they are wondering, they are honest; they accept their flaws, they make no excuses. Timothy Fortune at first tries to convert others to believe as he does, not from arrogance but because he is so sure that his way will bring them happiness and peace of mind. But he learns that each can only be happy and fulfilled following his own beliefs; he learns there is no single path to happiness. He learns that taking away what someone believes in causes irreparable damage, regardless of how noble one's motives were in doing so. I will not soon forget Timothy Fortune or his story.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The e-book edition I read included the coda novella, Salutations. Its primary value is in the beautiful writing. It is just a pleasure to read. But it isn't much for story telling and I really never felt completely engrossed. I think its value as an exploration into human nature and friendship will increase as I continue to reflect on it.